The community theatre in theory and practice

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THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

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THE
COMMUNITY THEATRE

IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

BY

LOUISE BURLEIGH

With Illustrations

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1917

"\0 '^ ^> ''

Copyrii/IU, J!)17,
By Littlk, UitowN, and Company.

All rvjhts reserved
rublished, September, 1917

Nortonoli ^rrsB

Set up and clectrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

Presswork by S. J. Parkl.ill Si Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

SRlf

TO
CHARLOTTE ELIZA BURLEIGH

WHOSE GRATEFUIi NIECE CAN NEVER SUFFICIENTLY

THANK HER FOR A LIVING BELIEF

IN THE

SPIRIT OF FELLOWSHIP

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Prefatory Letter ix

Introduction xix

I The Community 1

II Sociological Theatre : Playgrounds and

Pageants 20

III Sociological Theatre: Caliban . . 34

IV Little Theatres 54

V Democratic Institutions .... 72

VI A CoLiJ}GE Theatre .... 84

VII The World's Example of the Community

Theatre 95

VIII What the Theatre Offers . . . 105

IX How Shall We Organize? . . . 117

X What Can Be Done With Little . . 132

XI Suggestions 144

XII The Theatrical Renaissance . . .158

Appendix 163

PREFATORY LETTER

Dear Miss Burleigh :

May I tliciiik you for letting me see the
proof sheets of your book "The Community
Theatre"? And may I congratuhite you and
your readers on the fact, rare in this field, that
this book of yours has been produced by one
who is a worker both in the theatre and in
the community ; for the fusion of the arts of
the one with the aspirations of the other is
the practical ideal of the community theatre.

Actual experience in both fields should,

therefore, precede the making of books on this

most practical subject. "After the practice

— the theory," as Gordon Craig writes at the

head of his journal, The Mask. Yet this is

too seldom the case ; for the workers most

skilled and effectual are nearly always too

definitely engaged in experiment and creation

to become commentators on their work; so

ix

X PREFATORY LETTER

that, in this field, the reading i)ul)lic has often
turned too confidingly to the writings of com-
mentators untested by sufficient real contact
with their subject matter.

Your ardent and broad-spirited work speaks
for itself. Examining actual conditions, ar-
tistic and social, it points forward with vision
— a vision not too far-focussed for present
needs. In reaction to its message, it is for me
only to wish your book Godspeed, and to
touch upon a few aspects of its theme which
your treatment suggests.

I do this, may I confess, with the more zeal
because I find your pages "backing me up" in
so many vital things which, for a good while,
my own conviction and experience have brought
home to me. Many of these I have set forth
very sketchily in my volume "The Civic
Theatre", a bird's-eye-view record of work
and thoughts in overcrowded years, published
by Mitchell Kennerley in 1912. Again in
your book there are other vital matters wherein
I feel perhaps we differ, rather in a stage of
experience than in the goal to be gained.

As example of our common ground of agree-

PREFATORY LETTER xi

ment, in your Introduction you aptly define
the Community Theatre as "a house of play
in which events offer to every member of a
body politic active participation in a common
interest."

In my volume just referred to, I write :

"A civic theatre is the efficient instrument
of the recreative art of a community."

Our definitions, you see, are worded differ-
ently, but clearly their meaning is the same :
"the civic theatre" and "the community
theatre" of our intent are one in idea, but I
think "community theatre" is the better
name for the idea.

In our goal, then, we are agreed. On our
road there perhaps at times we go by different
paths.

In a letter to me, referring to your book,
you write: "It is my aim to point out that
we need not wait for a revolution to found a
theatre which shall belong to the community,
if we are only willing to examine our communi-
ties and, as the expression is, 'begin small.'"

Now if by that expression "begin small" you
mean "begin modestly an immense under-

xii PREFATORY LETTER

taking", I am sincerely in accord with you.
But the danger is lest a community, in be-
ginning their theatre small, should see it small.

That would be fatal ; for from its very be-
ginnings, however modest, the community
theatre must be seen large in its far-reaching
ideal, or it will fail. Its founders, in short,
must have real vision — the vision to realize
the deep, revolutionizing forces it sets free,
in order that they may control and guide them
to constructive social ends.

It is from that conviction that I have written
in a recent essay on "Community Drama" : —
"In approaching my subject, I can approach
it in no less a sense than a world sense. . . .
Community Drama is testable by the most
modest beginnings ; but the scope of its prin-
ciple is vast — or it is nothing."

So, though I am heartily with you in your
high valuation of little theatres as centers of
community expression, I am none the less sure
that numbers of such have actually failed of
their true mission because they have not,
from the start, been seen large by their founders.
That is one reason why I believe greatly in the

PREFATORY LETTER xiii

value of large-scale community festivals as
leavening forerunners not only of the right
launching of little theatres, but of other more
special group organizations in social art, as in
community song, the dance, etc.

Such festivals, in forms of community
masques, dramas and pageants, awaken
popular imagination and enlighten public
opinion by the only successful means ap-
parently possible — the tests of actual ex-
perience and participation by representative
numbers in the cooperative arts involved.

With such purposes directly in mind, I laid
out the large-scale plan of the Pageant and
Masque of Saint Louis and the structural
form of "Caliban"; and personal observation
and experience in Saint Louis, New York and
Boston have borne out by results my belief
in the efficacy of the means employed.

To mention but one happy instance, and the
latest to strengthen my belief : As a result of
the three weeks' production of "Caliban" last
month at the Harvard Stadium, a permanent
Caliban Community League of Greater Boston,
comprising seventeen Caliban Clubs in differ-

xiv PREFATORY T.ETTER

ent sections of the community, has been organ-
ized "to encourage and foster the community
ideals exemplified in Caliban by developing
and practicing community drama, community
singing and music and other community activi-
ties in which all citizens may cooperate" —
the League having a published journal of its
own, "The Caliban News", and being officered
by sincere enthusiastic workers in the Masque,
backed by the loyalty of many hundreds of
participants.

One mistake, I think, we who write books
or prefaces should do our best to avoid : I
mean the mistake of discussing institutions,
organizations, classified subjects, as "things in
themselves" apart from the human persons
who actually give them form and being. Here,
for instance, in these remarks of mine and in
your book, are discussed such classified sub-
jects as the Community Theatre, the Little
Theatre, the Masque, the Pageant, the Socio-
logical Theatre. But, unavoidable as this
use of terms may be, do these things ever
exist as separate entities except in books.'*
When they are truly significant, are these

PREFATORY LETTER xv

organic agencies ever really alive apart from
their creators?

Looking back over ten years or more of work
in this field, the truth is borne in upon me by
many experiences that the forms of community
drama, though they involve a vast social co-
operation, are no exception to the law that art
forms and their organization are the product
of personal invention on the part of artists and
organizers.

Vast spectacles and dances, in which thou-
sands participate in color and motion ; noble
compositions, in which many hundreds take
part through harmonious sound ; organiza-
tions, through which multitudes cooperate
without friction, unaware of the means of
their doing so : — all these first took form in
the imaginations of a very few inventive human
beings, single or in small groups ; and the suc-
cess or failure of those spectacles, dances, com-
positions, organizations, will depend in large
measure on the technical equipment and fore-
sight of those human first causes of their being.

So, to treat of them apart from their himian
causes would be misleading. Little Theatres,

xvi PREFATORY LETTER

Community Theatres, Sociological Theatres,
etc. will depend for their value — not upon
valuations in theory and classification, but
upon actually whose theatres they are: who
conceives them, who organizes them, who
operates them.

This is not to minimize the immense value,
sociologic and artistic, of audiences and their
influence on dramatic art-forms, justly em-
phasized in your book; but it is rightly to
raise to their great value the guiding and
creative influences of those artists of the
theatre, always necessarily few, whose re-
sponsive imaginations shape the forms by
means of which audiences and participants are
enabled to cooperate in an harmonious whole.

So in your book, if I may venture the criti-
cism, in emphasizing truly as you do the un-
doubted dramatic renaissance in which our
country is taking part, and even in stressing
the vital significance of the theatre artist in
general, I wish that you might have given
more direct special emphasis to those living
creative personalities in America — such as
Robert Edmond Jones, designer, and Arthur

PREFATORY LETTER xvii

Farwell, composer — who are helping to shape
the destiny of the community theatre.

The social forces evoked by special genius
in this field are, of course, vaster than any
individuals involved. How eflficient an instru-
ment of these forces he may become is the
test of the community artist. So it is that I
have seen the community drama movement
in America, by virtue of its own democratic
might, grow and flourish from almost nothing
to flowerings of awe-inspiring grandeur; and
this, with practically no support, in its strug-
gling stages, from popular journalism ; and
with no comprehending attention or valuation
accorded to it by those critics and philosophical
students of our time whom the thinking public
looks to and counts upon to interpret the vital
signs and portents of democracy. Neither in
journals radical, progressive, or conservative,
appealing to the general public, will you find
yet any appropriate recognition of the power
and the beauty of this creative movement :
neither in "The Masses", nor "The New
Republic", nor "The Nation."

Yet happily, though the social critics and

xviii PREFATORY LETTER

philosophers might conceivably do much to
help it, this movement is self-reliant in the
spirit of its own workers and participants —
the living spirit of that art which is true de-
mocracy. And you, Miss Burleigh, who are
one of those real workers, may take joy —
through this gallant, interpretive emprise of
yours — in joining a small band of high-
hearted pioneers, in whose trail — when it
becomes well worn — the formal philosophers
are sure to follow.

Meanwhile, a happy work-time to you and

your book !

Sincerely yours,

Percy MacKaye.

Cornish, N. H.
7th August, 1917.

INTRODUCTION

Of the many changes which the past fifteen
years have seen in our theatre, undoubtedly
the most momentous is the abohtion of the
foothghts. The importance of their banish-
ment hes not in the artistic value but rather
in the spiritual significance of the achievement.
The footlights were a barrier between the
actor and the audience. By them the theatre
was divided into two distinct and separate
parts, like two countries whose common bound-
ary is a great river or high mountains. In-
deed, we spoke of the division as did the ancient
Romans of the Alps, referring to "beyond the
footlights" or to "this side of the footlights."
The removal of the barrier affects not only
the workers on the stage but those whose task
is to create from the scats of the auditorium
— for the need for active cooperation on the
part of the audience is fast becoming a com-
monplace — and it is because of this duality

XX INTRODUCTION

that the innovation is more important than
its fellows.

How different is the New Theatre from that
of twenty years ago ! On the stage side of the
footlights there has been created a new being,
the artist of the theatre. And this artist of the
theatre, about whom much has been said and
written, and who is perhaps best compared to
the leader of an orchestra, has summoned help
from all the arts to weave a new texture of
beauty. The architect and the sculptor have
brought beauty of construction and cleared
away the clutter of unneeded detail ; the
painter has colored the setting with imagina-
tion and made meanings where before there
were only haphazard imitations of what we
see every day ; the musician has filled pauses
with beauty ; the dancer and the poet have
not been neglected ; and finally even the
scientist has been called in to give of his
knowledge. It is as if the stage had expanded,
pushing and pushing in growth until it burst
its restraint; and, flowing over the footlights,
it extinguished them as it went, and finally
reached the audience.

INTRODUCTION xxi

For the artist of the theatre has always
understood that all the means at his com-
mand are but instruments for the service of
the audience. Without the audience he is
lost. The movement on the stage, while it is
the reason for the existence of the spectators,
cannot escape the domination exercised by
them. It is the aim of every artist in the
theatre to unite the spirits of his audience into
one thought and to express that thought
through action on his stage. So from the
beginning of the theatrical renaissance, of
which we are now a part, stage directors have
been reaching out over the audience, and in
order to encourage their spiritual cooperation,
have often given them an actual physical part
to play. The prologue once more walks our
boards. The "Flowery Way" down which
the actors come to the stage has been set up
in our western theatre by Professor Reinhardt,
following the happy custom of Japan. Mr.
Stuart Walker has personified the listener; in
one of his plays at least, " You-in-the-Audience"
not only speaks, but actually wanders up to the
stage, takes part in the play, and at last solves

xxii INTRODUCTION

the quandaries of the characters to every one*s
satisfaction. It seems to me that Mr. Walker,
who has the instincts of the stage artist so
highly developed that he is able to turn from
writing to acting and directing with perfect
ease, has intuitively hit upon a great truth,
and has in his character of "You-in-the-
Audience" made a symbolical forecast of the
next step in the progress of the theatrical art.
The artists of the theatre, like the people
in Mr. Walker's charming play, have done
their very best. It is time for "You-in-the-
Audience" to go up and take a hand.

Now just as it is true that changes have
swept over the stage in the theatre, is it true
that something has happened to the audience.
The architecture of our Theatre proves it.
The old theatres were made up of tier upon
tier of boxes and galleries, while some of our
newer ones have less than three hundred seats.
When the New Theatre was built in New York,
its construction followed the old lines, and the
New Theatre failed with a promptness which
has been referred to many times by theatrical
commentators. Undoubtedly there is a pre-

INTRODUCTION xxiii

dominance of the style of play which demands
an audience near at hand, but is that very
predominance not a symptom rather than a
disease ? The kind of play which has an intel-
lectual appeal, fundamentally, will not reach a
large audience; the large audience demands
great, simple emotions : conversely, the small
audience demands a limited range of emotions
and usually will prefer to be stirred through
the intellect than through the emotions. So the
Little Theatre in New York, with its exquisite
productions of intellectual delicacies, may be
thought to limit its audience by the size of its
auditorium. Or, on the other hand, it may be
considered to be the answer to a demand made
by a few : the reply perhaps to the indifference
of thousands who have gone elsewhere for their
entertainment and delight.

For we have in our theatre everything but
an audience. Small groups of interested spec-
tators there are, and I am glad to believe that
the number is increasing. But now the mass
of the people, the people with simple emotions
and simple appreciations, are not in the theatre.
Where are they.'* They may be sleeping;

xxiv INTRODUCTION

they may not know that there is a theatre.
Miss Jane Addams tells a poignant tale of a
Greek fruit vender who did not know there
were Americans who loved the ancient beauty
of his country. He had brought with him
mementos of that loveliness, hoping to find
interest in his new home; but his customers
refused to be led to speak of Greece's glory,
and it was only when he happened upon a
picture of the Acropolis at Hull House that he
revealed the sketches and drawings he had
made. No doubt there are people to whom
the theatre has not shown herself except as the
home of false values, the exhibition room of
ugliness and even of vice. How glad those
people would be to be discovered by the artist
of the theatre !

Others of the audience for which we are
seeking may be in the motion-picture theatres.
The architecture once more seems to be a key
. . . the old theatres have many of them been
converted into "movie houses" or have been
replaced by buildings which follow in some
measure their generous lines. These houses
are filled not once a day but again and again

INTRODUCTION xxv

from morning till night. Much has been wisely
said and much foolishly upon this matter.
Authorities differ very widely upon the cause
for the popularity of the movie ; one would
have us think that it is the new art of democracy
in its toddling infancy ; another assures us that
it is popular because it is inexpensive; and a
third that it is a fad and will soon lose its sup-
porters. No doubt there is truth in each
statement ; but this is not the place for a pro-
longed discussion of the value of the motion
picture except as it affects the audience of the
spoken drama.

When the artist of the theatre looks to the
motion-picture house for the audience which
he desires, his first query will be, naturally,
will the audience come back to the spoken
drama from the silent oncf^ Yes, a thousand
times yes. The motion picture may develop
into many things which it is not in its present
state, but it will never replace the spoken
drama. The motion-picture enthusiast does
not scorn the theatre. Some four years ago
the present writer was acting in a small, ill-
trained, and unpretending company whose

xxvi INTRODUCTION

duty was to fill the gaps in the routine of films
in a motion-picture theatre. The manage-
ment boasted that their films were the best in
the city : the audience paid its ten cents at
the door and demanded full value for it. The
hard-working company gave hastily prepared
but sincere representations of good one-act
plays. The performance flowed steadily from
ten in the morning until ten at night, repeat-
ing itself three times during the day. If we
accept the theory so often put forward that
the movie lover loses his interest in the spoken
drama, we should expect to hear that during
the playlet the audience became inattentive,
or perhaps that they left the theatre when it
was announced. This was not true, in spite
of the inferior quality of the acting seen in the
play to that on the screen. (Inferior it un-
doubtedly was : the film actors were artists
ranging from John Bunny to Sarah Bernhardt !)
But, far from leaving the theatre, the audience
applied continually at the box office for the
hour of the play in order that they might not
miss it. The motion picture had not hurt
the audience for the spoken drama; indeed, I

INTRODUCTION xxvii

think there had been the creation of an audience
in that theatre. Nor was its audience in any
way unique : it was the average motion-picture
audience. Its attitude, then, may be taken
as typical of motion-picture audiences, and it
is safe to assume that they are in general ready
to be called back into the theatre. They will
come no doubt with a new taste, but come
they will. The artist of the theatre will find
them with lamps trimmed and burning.

But there are other signs that the audience
is waiting to be called into the theatre. A
movement which had fundamentally no con-
nection with the art of the theatre has brought
the audience to its doors. This is the move-
ment of social reorganization led by the social
scientist.

The social scientist represents the audi-
torium as the artist of the theatre does the
stage ; he seeks to awaken his group to con-
sciousness of self. And after groping here and
there he has hit upon the value of play, es-
pecially cooperative play, in his work. And
play has led him to the arts of the theatre.

Not long ago in our puritanical order of

xxviii INTRODUCTION

living, play was despised. Then Froebel dis-
covered its value as an educative force, and
when it had won its way so far into our lives,
it began to be studied for its own sake. The
history of play is an interesting one which the
world cannot afford to neglect. It carries with
it the sanity and joy of living, and because it
permits the expression of emotions, it leads to
art, and more than to any art, to the art of the
theatre.

The earlier forms of play to which the social
scientist turned were undeveloped expressions
of the art of the theatre. The playgrounds
for children — to be spoken of more fully later
on — were the first and simplest result. The
need for play in older children was answered
by dance halls and clubs, and the development
assumed the actual outlines of the theatrical
art in the first dramatic clubs created with a
social end. From these clubs there have grown
up a series of small theatres — the most vigor-
ous assertion by the audience that it wishes to
come into the theatre.

But — and this is the most important point
of all — the audience does not want to come

INTRODUCTION xxix

into the theatre to sit inert. To use again
the phraseology of Mr. Walker's play, *'You-
in-the- Audience " is ready to mount the stage
and play his part; the artists of the theatre
have done all they can as yet ; the progress
of the action awaits the worker from the audi-
torium ; and the most vital point becomes the
method by which the audience shall be taught
to assume its responsibilities. It seems a some-
what terrifying fact that the success or failure
of the theatre must rest with untaught and
untrained people. Will the art of the theatre
languish and die? Can the yoke of art be
made to fit a democracy ?

Our democracy has begun the solution of

similar problems. The public schools — im-

1 perfect, experimental, everchanging, but under

\ State control — are the reply to a demand for

I education : the great library systems which

we see expanding year by year, are the answer

'\ to the need for broader culture; certain arts

I — painting and sculpture for example — have

i half-way recognition in museums; and yet

none of these things, neither education, culture,

^or the arts of painting and sculpture, have the

XXX INTRODUCTION

purely social quality which is inherent in the
dramatic art. For the theatre cannot exist
without its audience ... its immediate, liv-
ing, breathing audience. It is as much a con-
cern of all the people as the conservation of
resources, the direction of labor, and the pro-
motion of agriculture. Shall we then expect
to find a Commission of the Theatrical Arts at
Washington ?

Already certain artists have suggested that
something of the kind might be possible. The
government is fast taking over every subject
which concerns the public good, and making it
the business of the government to administer
such matters; why not, then, the question of
public recreation?

If we were a bureaucratic state, it would be
a simple matter to impose a system of state
theatres. A director is appointed, let us say,
a chain of theatres is built, and each is put
into the hands of an expert, who instantly draws
about him a staff of able workmen — behold
an efficient machinery for the production of
Theatrical Art ! And yet what proof have we
that the audience which stays away from the

INTRODUCTION xxxi

present commercial theatre would fill the
vacant seats of one which came as the gift of a
paternal despotism ? Even if they did come
for a short time there are many reasons to
suppose that they would not continue to sup-
port a theatre so established. A state theatre
must not be a theatre which is applied to the
community from without or from above; it
cannot be the perfected dream of artists ; it
must spring from the dreams and needs of the
everyday person, the need for expression of a
whole community. When individual commu-
nities have felt the need for a group expression
strongly enough, when each has — imperfect
and struggling — an organization for the ex-
pression of community emotion, there will
come spontaneously from the whole people the
demand for a central art direction. It will be
then that the theatrical art will be in flower,
and until then we must look for groping and
imperfection.

In these chapters it is the aim of the author
to consider the social quality of the dramatic
art, the emotional needs of an ordinary com-
munity, and to point out that each may have

xxxii INTRODUCTION

its greatest opportunity for perfection through
a theatre based upon those principles upon
which democratic institutions must be built.

And, since English is so inaccurate a
language, and since we are so susceptible to
catch phrases, it may be well to set down at
once the meaning of the term "Community
Theatre" as used in this volume. Later it
will be necessary to dissect and explain at
length the derivation of each phrase, but at
present it will be sufficient to express it as
clearly as possible in order that no misunder-
standing may arise.

The Community Theatre is a house of play in
which events offer to every member of a body
politic active participation in a common interest.

This definition is broad enough to allow great
latitude in its local application, a very neces-
sary quality in so varied and heterogeneous a
state as our own. It can be applied, I believe,
with no fundamental alteration to large as well
as to small communities, just as, in spite of
Plato's assertion that it could not, a democratic
form of government has been found successful
in states of over five tliousand inhabitants.

INTRODUCTION xxxiii

What growth may come to the community
theatre as it reaches out and grows under the
influence of practice it is not possible to imag-
ine, but we should be indeed visionless if we
did not believe that its flowering will exceed
all our hopes. It is this quality which has made
democratic institutions beloved of poets and
seers since the day of Pericles in Athens when
the glimmerings of democratic dawn were first
visible — this blossoming beyond the belief of
those who sow the seed.

And yet, in spite of an apparent looseness in
the general terms of the definition, precise
limits have been set for the community theatre
so defined. In order to see what it may not
and what it must not do, it will be well to study
with attention some of the independent, small,
non-commercial (in the usual sense of Broad-
way) theatres which have come into being all
over the country. They offer much that is
practical and helpful in the organization of the
community theatre, even while they prove
that the fact of their origin outside the ranks
of the theatrical profession is not sufficient to
endow them with magical virtues. Followers

xxxiv INTRODUCTION

of the Little Theatre movement have been too
eager to accept any independent theatrical
organization and to assume that everything
which came from such a source was invariably
fine. On the other hand, the enemies of the
movement have been quick to condemn all
Little Theatres as the feeble striving of dabblers.
As is usual, the truth lies somewhere between
these two extreme views. The Little Theatre
has made contributions to the art of the theatre
already, but its greatest gift is the promise
which it carries, the hope of the theatre as an
institution of the people.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the use of photographs I am indebted
to Mr. Stuart Walker of the Portmanteau
Theatre, to the Vagabond Theatre in Balti-
more, the Forest Theatre of Carmel-by-the-
Sea, and the Idler Club of Radeliffe College.

To the officers of these theatres and their
fellows of the Appendix, I am under obligation
for continued courtesy. I trust that in some
slight way the results may prove helpful to that
enthusiasm of which the Little Theatre is a
sign.

Finally, I owe much to my generous friends.
But especially do I wish to thank Fraulein
Mayer, Mr. Sheldon Cheney, and Mr. Percy
MacKaye for the benefit of their experience
conferred by an unfailing interest.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Patchwork Curtain which Supports the

"Vagabond" Idea .... Frontispiece
A lovely and simple substitution for a heavy velvet
curLiin.

PACINQ PAQB

The Seven Gifts 28

Played in Madison Square, before five thousand peo-
ple, on Christmas Eve. An excellent example of
simplicity of line.

Detail of a Scene from Caliban, by Percy

MacKaye SO

Setting by Robert Edmond Jones. The use of the
mask was revived with eminent success.

An Outdoor Play at Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cali-
fornia 62

Gammer Gurton's Needle 70

The vigor and vitality of the old comedy emphasized
by the whimsy uf the set.

National Sylvan Theatre, Washington, D. C. 71

On the grounds of the Washington Monument.

National Sylvan Theatre, Washington, D. C. 80

The auditorium during preparations for a perform-
ance.

The Chinese Lantern 138

Produced by the Idler Club of Hadcliffe College, under
the direction of Mr. Sam Huuic.
XXXV ii

>-X'

C r

THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

CHAPTER I

The Community

Why do we need a Community Theatre?
Let us, before deciding, look for a moment at
the modern community.

The dictionary says that a community is
"a body poHtic; any body of persons having
common interests, privileges, etc. ; a sharing
or participation." Further, that useful book
quotes in exposition of the word's use, this
statement from J. R. Seeley, "Three ties by
which states are held together are community
of race, community of religion, and commu-
nity of interest." Using this definition and
this quotation as a basis, let us examine com-
munities as we know them, to discover just
how closely the meaning of the word may
be said to apply.

Modern communities are communities only
1

2 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

in the loosest sense in which the word can be
taken, A city is a great group of people liv-
ing within certain geographical limits. It is
to be sure "a body politic", but it has no
common interests which weld it into a great
whole; except in one case in a thousand there
is not the least sign of participation in a com-
mon life. This principle is equally true in the
small communities, but it is more self-evident
in a large city. The commercial organization
of society is based primarily upon competition
which has resulted in disunion rather than
cooperation. The effects can be most clearly
seen in the great centres.

What homogeneity is there in an American
city? Every race of the earth goes to make
up the citizenry. This is no longer true
merely of eastern cities, it is true of all cities,
east, west, north, and south. Nor are the
European and Asiatic newcomers the only
foreigners; there are as well those hordes of
country-born and country-bred city-dwellers
to whom the city always seems strange. Some-
times the inhabitants of one locality in a city
have brought with them traditions which they

THE COMISIUNITY 3

hold in coiimioii, but they are the traditions of
another phice and of an okler race than the
city in which they live. So we find a Ghetto,
an Italian quarter, a German colony, and a
French settlement, each preserving the mem-
ory of home perhaps, but entering into the life
of the American city of which it is a part,
without organization, without any definite and
common ground except the struggle for exist-
ence.

Yet all our cities have made partial attempts
to find some sort of common ground for their
inhabitants. The working people have or-
ganized themselves into unions of the various
trades, feeling for fellowship as well as for
financial gain. But unions are limited, and
they include fe,w of the people in a great city,
even wlien they are bound one to the other in
a kind of Super-Union. They do not supply
the need for an amalgamating force, but
rather they tend, like everything else in a great
commercial centre, to emphasize the difference
between one class of citizens and another.

To be sure, in cities everywhere a system of
organized play has grown up, there are munici-

4 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

pal entertainments, municipal baths, and parks
which are certainly for all the population.
Notwithstanding, such provisions made by
the city are regarded not as a privilege, but
rather as a last resort; we do not find all
New York splashing happily in the Public
Baths ! Every class of citizen may be seen
in Central Park, to be sure; artists paint
it, leaders of society gallop along the bridle
paths, children of the very rich feed the swans,
and tattered little boys play at hide and seek
in the shade of the trees ; but in all this there
is nothing which draws these individuals closer
together. There is nothing beyond what lies
in the common possession of paved streets
and a water supply. Taxes pay for the smooth-
ness of the lawns, everything is impersonal,
removed from actual experience. It must of
necessity be so, but think what a difference
could be made if the millionaire whose motor
slips daily along those level drives and the
lounger who eats his dry roll on the green
carpet were personally responsible for the care
and the beauty of that park; if, for example,
each threw off his coat and bent his back to a

THE COMMUNITY 5

lawn mower, one day in the year, by the side
of the other ! Would the great park be then a
mere physical accident, a geographical bond?
But beyond the impersonal quality of public
possessions, all those of the city have tended,
because of our capitalistic and commercial
organization of the state, to separate individ-
uals into classes rather than to unite all classes
into a unified community. Parks, libraries
and even the public schools have been looked
upon as a beneficence, almost as a charity,
provided for the poor by taxing the rich. The
children of well-to-do parents and of the
professional classes are sent to private schools,
they play in the parks under the eyes of nurses,
and when they grow old enough to use the
library, there is little in the quiet of the great
reading room to inspire the feeling that every
reader is a fellow citizen, sharing the store of
knowledge for which the library stands, striving
for the same ideals, and equally responsible for
the beauty of a common life. It is natural
that cities built upon a basis of commercial
enterprise should emphasize differences in
wealth as they grow; the accident of locality.

6 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

— rich and poor do not live side by side, —
such everyday matters as means of transporta-
tion, places and manner of worship, the devices
employed for entertainment, all tend to widen
the breach.

For example, take religion. What com-
munity can be united in a common religion?
Toleration in religious belief is perhaps more
fundamental than any other tenet in the
creed of our democracy : not only in cities but
everywhere. In the smallest settlements spire
strives against spire to attest the liberty we
suffer in the worship of God. Great cities
harbor strange beliefs, old and new, un-
prosecuted. But even the followers of a
single creed are not necessarily united. This
is true primarily in cities where the ritual of
worship varies less widely than the ritual of
social life. It is a tragic reality that the
union achieved when men kneel side by side
in prayer is more than offset by the fact that
the one walks home to cabbage with boiled
beef while the other is borne in a liveried car-
riage to the fastidious ceremony of course upon
course. Moreover, in cities the poor man and

THE COMMUNITY 7

the rich one do not worship side by side.
Fashionable churches support missions which
share their creeds and even their management,
but which prevent actual contact between those
who should be neighbors. Once more the
simple accident of geography has made a high
barrier.

Common ancestors have vanished. A
common worship no longer exists. There
remains only the "community of interest"
of which Mr. Seeley speaks. Clearly our
cities have none. Now and then, temporarily,
a sporadic interest arises strong enough to
reach all the inhabitants : there is need for a
drainage system ; or, some keen demand of
the schools, some widespread lack in public
works, which molds the citizens into a single-
minded body. But when the end is achieved,
there is certain to be a lapse into the old dis-
organization.

The most evident needs in our modern life
are those which spring from great disasters.
For example, in Salem, Massachusetts, there
was a great and terrible fire, destroying life
and property and calling out the most simple

8 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

and most human qualities and emotions. Re-
sponse was instant. Life grew simple in a
moment, and, overnight, strangers were con-
verted into neighbors. And as long as the
emotion lasted, the cooperation held them to-
gether; then life settled once more into its
normal rut. So too, on the dock of a great
steamship line, a group of strangers gathered
to say bon voyage to those who were sailing to
the danger zone : before the gangplank was up
there was a fellowship among them, and when
the last sight of the boat had failed, they walked
quietly away, chatting together like friends.
One after another we have seen the countries
of the world welded into units by the horrible
blast of war, by the influence of a great idea
clothed in terms of human emotion. Is it
not possible to apply the lesson which it
teaches to peace, to our lives as we live them,
day by day?

It is more than possible — it is being done.
Organizations for peace are becoming more
and more popular : the Red Cross, which
originated in war, has carried its usefulness
over into the fighting of accidents and calami-

THE COMMUNITY 9

ties of peace, the Boy Scouts are organized
primarily for everyday life, and here and there
all over the country, pageants and masques have
been springing up to rouse civic interest and
civilian pride.

The case of the city of St. Louis, although
most often cited, is perhaps more conclusive
than any other. Civic reform is valuable only
when it is permanent, and it will not be perma-
nent if it is not the work of all the citizens.
The few in St. Louis who felt the need of a new
charter and of the completion of a great- munici-
pal bridge, knew that these things must be
the work not of the few, but of the entire
citizenry. And with an insight which bespeaks
great things for our future as an artistic unity
and as a unified nation, they turned to the arts
of the theatre to accomplish the persuasion of
the citizens. The result was the achievement
for which they were seeking — the new charter
was made and the bridge was built — more-
over, there is the promise of more permanent
union in artistic causes in St. Louis.

But the organization of a complex and
diffuse group like the cily is naturally more

10 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

difficult than that of a smaller one. So the
Masque of Caliban, produced in celebration
of the Shakespeare Tercentenary, was less
visibly successful than the Masque of St. Louis ;
and just so the smaller and more intimate
attempts in villages have been more imme-
diately effective. However, the need for a
unifying force is none the less present in the
small than in the large commimity : there is
perhaps a more crying demand for a common
interest in small isolated villages than in the
great cities.

It used to be true of American villages that
they were somewhat held together by ties of
race. Now most villages fall into two classes,
those which have not been reinforced from the
new material, and those which have more new
blood than they have assimilated. Every
frequenter of the backwater of New England
is familiar with the tragedy of the town where
intermarriage has been the rule for four or five
consecutive generations, and from which the
youth and the rugged strength has been
sapped by emigration with no renewal from
outside. Such towns usually have an appalling

THE COMMUNITY 11

percentage of degenerates and invalids, and in
such towns there is practically no industry;
the people make a living — meagre as it is —
and ask for nothing more. There is no joy,
no vitality, no life in the real sense. Social
life is a set of conventions, religion is the
following of a dogma ; men breed and feed
and die. Vice in the most dreadful forms exists
in these villages, hand-in-hand with disease of
body and mind. When the outside world
comes to visit them it brings more of a curse
than a blessing, for it usually comes seeking
pleasure, and the natives find the most super-
ficial and unfortunate characteristics supreme
in the advent of "summer people." What-
ever rural simplicity may have existed is de-
stroyed by the intrusion of a sophisticated
point of view, and Ihe fraction of the country
folk who do not emulate the newcomer, gen-
erally join forces against him.

In the little village of X — — there is one
long main street upon which most of the four
hundred inhabitants live. Not far away there
is a summer colony centred round an hotel, and
scattered throuijh the town are houses which

12 THE COM^IUNITY THEATRE

are closed in winter, but which are still con-
sidered an integral part of the village. The
owner of such a house, Mrs. Norman, whose
years of good citizenship had endeared her to
the community, met in a distant city a village
woman, Mrs. Prince. They chatted long about
the distant little town : Mrs. Prince had much
to tell of what had happened on the quiet
street. In leaving Mrs. Norman remembered
to send a message to a neighbor, the friend of
years, whose unobtrusive cottage lay between
her own large house and that of Mrs. Prince.
Mrs. Prince hesitated. "But I shall probably
not see her before you do," she said. "Of
course, one can not know every one, even in

X ."

Clearly there is need for some force which
shall offset so false a social standard, and for
this force it is hopeless to look to the Church.
Once more the toleration which is our pride
serves to divide rather than to weld the factors.
In most villages of such a type there are too
many churches — half filled and sleepy. The
unfortunate preacher is unable to do anything
for his parish ; often he wishes to unite with

THE COMMUNITY 13

some other church and is prevented by tradi-
tion, and the most he can do is to struggle
along cheerfully, underpaid and overworked.
The younger people find the church stupid;
there is no new life in it. They have deserted
the puritanical standards of their fathers, and
they want to dance, to sing, to enjoy life ; but
such matters are not considered the problems
for which the Church exists, and so the young
people gather at the corner drug store instead
of in the church.

In other settlements a new problem is in-
troduced by an influx of Roman Catholic
peoples. These are the towns which have
industries, factories, and mills to which newly-
made Americans are carried by their employ-
ment. And where lately was a quiet town
with traditions of the Anglo-Saxon race, with
a population largely "American-born", there
is suddenly a flood of broken English and the
chatter of strange tongues ; a new town springs
up within the old one yet apart from it. Once
more the pro})lem is one of amalgamation.
How shall the strange elements be mingled
and made one ? Not through race, not through

14 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

religion, but through some institution which
shall offer a common interest — an interest
which shall include all the varieties and which
shall by that very inclusion teach the one to
understand the other.

The diversity of race which is after all the
most outstanding fact of our population is
considered by many people a cause for agita-
tion. From time to time staggering statistics
are published, and intelligent people read them
with anxious expressions. At all times and in
all places, "peril" and "menace" are spoken
as synonyms for immigration. It is said that
the newcomers from Southern Europe are espe-
cially dangerous to our democracy — and yet,
democracy was first dreamed of in Greece,
and Rome built the first republic.

Those who have been privileged to know
intimately certain of our "foreign" population
feel quite at ease as to the outcome . . . if
we can make use of the good impulses before the
bad ones have been fostered by those who would
twist them to evil ends. They are so eager to
be Americans, so ready to believe all that
is fine of their new country. There is not

THE COMMUNITY 15

the least hesitation in their minds as to
their nationahty, even before the intricacies
of the Enghsh language are wholly under-
stood. It would be possible to multiply
examples to prove this, but one story will be
sufficient.

In a little New Hampshire village settled
long ago by straight-laced Protestants, a tiny
wooden Roman Catholic Church has been built,
in which the good Father every Sunday says
Mass, preaching not only in English, but in
French as well, for those of his flock who have
not yet picked up the strange tongue. The faces
of the congregation are laughing Celtic faces,
some Irish and some French : there is not one
Anglo-Saxon among them all. Across the way,
however, descendants of the early settlers still
gather in the half vncant and wholly uncomfort-
able pews of the neat white Congregational
Church. They speak with no little scorn of their
neighbors, usually calling them, "them cath'lic
furreners."

But one summer day when the warm air
inspired dullness and drowsiness, the priest
made an appeal to his people which rang so

16 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

clearly even in his broken English that it could
be heard across the silent village street in the
calm of the long prayer. The collection for
the day was to be used to heat the church in
winter; it was necessary that the imaginations
of his flock be roused. He expostulated and
besought them, drawing a vivid picture of the
shivering during Christmas Mass, and finally
— not without a perceptible twinkle of amuse-
ment — he said that he should descend from
the chancel and pass the plate in person. It
was here that his voice grew tense with indigna-
tion at the thought of the comparison which
he was about to make. "I must take the
collection !" he cried. "There are some people
who will not give until the collection is made
by the priest . . . and there are people who
give one penny Sunday after Sunday . . .
who give to the Church of God what they would
throw to a monkey sitting on the shoulder of a
foreigner with a hand organ!" And his voice
had the same note of pride which might have
been heard across the way among the first
families !

And that "foreigner" with the monkey —

THE COMMUNITY 17

what was he in his own thought? Not a
foreigner, not an Italian ; no, he like the
others, was an American. And so through all
the diversity of race there is in our State a bond
which is stronger and finer than any mere
physical tie could ever be — the spiritual
community of ideals to which Mr. Wilson
gave voice in a speech to new citizens in
Philadelphia on the tenth of May, 1915. I
can do no better than to set down in Mr.
Wilson's own words the expression of those
ideals :

You who have just sworn allegiance to this
great government were drawn across the ocean
by some beckoning finger, by some belief, by
some vision of a new kintl of justice, by some
expectation of a better kind of life.

No doubt you have been disappointed in
some of us, and some of us are very disappoint-
ing. No doubt what you found here did not
seem touched for you, after all, with the com-
plete beauty of the ideal which you had con-
ceived beforehand ; but remember this, if we
have grown at all poor at the ideal, you have
brought some of it with you. A man does not
go to seek the thing that is not in him. A
man does not hope for the thing that he does
not l)elieve in, and if some of us have forgotten
what America believed in, you, at any rate.

18 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

imported in your own hearts a renewal of the
belief.

That is the reason why I for one, make you
welcome. If I have forgotten in any degree
what America was intended for, I will thank
God if you remind me. I was born in America.
You dreamed dreams of what America was to
be, and I hope you brought the dreams with
you. No man who does not rightly see visions
will ever realize any high hope or undertake
any high enterprise, and just because you
brought the dreams with you, America is
more likely to realize the dreams such as you
brought.

So if you come into this great nation, you
will have to come voluntarily, seeking some-
thing which we have to give. All that we have
to give is this : we cannot exempt you from
work. We cannot exempt you from strife,
the heart-breaking burden of the struggle of
the day that has come to mankind everywhere.
We cannot exempt you from the loads that you
must carry : we can only make them light by
the spirit in which they are carried, because
it is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty,
it is the spirit of justice.

Our State, even in its small communities,
cannot be held together by race nor by religion.
For a unifying force we must find a living ex-
pression of a great common ideal : we must
depend upon a community of interest : we

THE COMMUNITY 19

must find an institution in which great and
small can find expression. The art of the
theatre, or more precisely, the allied arts of
the theatre, are utterly calculated to perform
this service.

CHAPTER II

Sociological Theatre: Playgrounds and
Pageants

A SOLEMN small boy bent double over a
sand pile is not an unusual sight. Drawing
deep breaths in his concentration, he remains
absorbed until the task which he has set for
himself is completed. Then, with a glance of
triumphant pride, he is likely to turn to the
nearest bystander with some such brevity as
"See!"

It used to be only on beaches at the seashore
and in back yards that we came upon children
thus, but now even in the most crowded parts
of our precipitate cities, there are scattered
groups, the nucleus of a giant organism, the
germ of the recreation centre. And the flat,
insignificant sand bin traces its growth back
through a numerous, distinguished ancestry.
In its extraordinary pedigree are names which
20

PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 21

seem to liave little in common with an un-
assuming heap of sand. Plato, Kant, Hegel,
Schiller, Froebel, Groos, and James are there,
with Stanley Hall, Judge Lindsey, and Joseph
Lee. The thought of generations conceived,
and the practical, present-day energy gave
birth to it. But it does not rest on the glory
of its family tree : it is not only a descendant
of illustrious persons. The sand pile is already
an ancestor : it has gi\'en us the recreation
centre, the city playground. And from the
playground other great gifts are coming.

"See," demands the small sand digger, and
holds up a box cover mounded with the shining
grains. What do we see.? Not a mud pie:
this is rather a doorway opened into the long
corridors of nuui's most ancient instincts.
Here is the culmination of the universal im-
pulse to play, the psychological analysis of
that impulse, and its relation to the history
of mankind's progress.

From an{i(juity there has been discussion of
the values of i)l;iy. But witli the new science
of psycliology came a discovery whicli gave it
a fresh imj)(*;'[:nic(% IliaL is, llial ])iay is not

22 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

only useful but actually necessary to human
life. The study of play and its subdivision
into categories is complex and often confusing :
it is sufficient to say that we have seen it proved
how play, directed, becomes education.

This great contribution to our constructive
philosophy came from Germany, and is amaz-
ingly modern, Froebel, to whom we turn for a
crystallization of the ideas most fundamental
in child psychology, assures us that education
must be through self-activity. The child,
playing, molds himself into a man. By
struggling with the gesture, he learns the
meaning. So the kindergarten, out-of-doors,
with its gartener to lead and direct the chil-
dren's happy occupation, may well be called
the first playground.

But when we turn to those centres of city
recreation which are given the name in America,
we find the earliest attempts coming from iso-
lated benevolent social organizations. The
first playgrounds were in Boston, but sponta-
neous growths having no apparent connection
with them followed in New York and in other
cities. In the year 1906, the Playground

PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 23

Association of America was organized, although
at that time there were only twenty cities in
which playgrounds were being kept alive. The
number has grown by leaps and bounds, the
activities have increased and multiplied : no
longer a group of sand piles in a vacant lot
constitutes all that is necessary ; there is
complex apparatus and a trained corps of
directors. And from the impulse of scattered
individuals, it has become a movement of
municipalities.

The primary function of the playground was
to give space and opportunity for children to
satisfy their natural and necessary impulse
to play. Sand boxes, with other equipment
— swings, slides, and seesaws — were erected
in a vacant lot, and the playground pronounced
ready for use. But the friction which always
results from human relations was not lacking
in this case : trouble followed the gathering
of so many and so varied children in one small
spot : the need for a director was immediately
apparent. Moreover, if the play was to educate
as well as to occupy, it must be led into tlic
proper channels. For that play which lias the

24 THE COMISIUNITY THEATRE

highest value for the molding of the man is
not the individual play in a sand pile, but the
cooperative play of group games.

So the playground has satisfied first the desire
to retrace in each individual the history of the
mysterious race of mankind ; the little child
swings high and low with an exultation which
he does not ask to understand, and dabbles
in warm or moist sand, renewing some ancient
emotional memory. Then he grows older. He
comes to be aware of the existence of his fellows,
he is taught loyalty and team play, the value
of sacrifice to the whole, of which he is a part.
Friendship and loyalty, obedience to rules,
and the qualities of leadership are thus
developed. The intellect enters the play-
ground, whereupon play touches aesthetics,
and a new element is introduced.

It was not long after the founding of the first
playgrounds that the builders thought it wise
to make them as agreeable to the eye as
possible. It may have been that the folk dances
were made part of the programme for the
sake of the girls, but it seems more likely
that they developed naturally from singing

PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 25

and dancing games, dear to childhood since the
beginning of time. Rhythm is an important
factor in play. "Dressing-up", even in a
kerchief and apron, is fun. The dance can be
exhibited to parents at the end of the season,
reacting pleasantly on the life of the play-
ground, as well as on the child, by linking it
with the home interests. Dances are at first
isolated ; then they are strung together in groups,
in order that they may have coherence for their
final performance. Have we not thus prepared
the way for the more complex arts of the
theatre ?

The playground originated for the purpose
of furthering physical health ; but not long
after it was discovered that physical and
mental well-l)eing cannot be separated. From
disorganized material, the iron swings made of
gas-pipe and a teeter with one vacant end high
in the air, there has been a steady growth to
the May party whose chanting chorus merrily
salutes a flower-bedecked and laughing queen.
The child who spent his playtitne in the sand
heap comes again to the playground for diver-
sion when he is older : unconsciously he slips

26 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

from one stage of development to another;
when he outgrows the isolated digging in the
sand he joins group games, he becomes — as
Mr. Joseph Lee phrases it — "an Injun"
following the leader of the team ; he submits
to discipline until he is a trained member of
the playground community. Upon reaching
this more purely mental point, he realizes
that he is no longer a child but that under the
veil of a cultivated taste has retained all the
child's desire to play. He wishes an in-
tellectual and emotional outlet in his playtime,
a demand which has been answered in many
playgrounds over the country by the establish-
ment of an annual pageant in which old and
young take part.

The pageant is the most flexible form of
dramatic expression. It is a loose-jointed
member of the Theatre Family, and an adept
at contortions. Since Mr. Louis Parker's re-
vival of the form in England, it has been
customary to make the pageant round the
history of some locality, conferring a measure
of coherence upon the whole by devices like
the chorus of monks who chanted at intervals

PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 27

during the Pageant of Saint Albans. It will
be understood that this flexible formula bends
comfortably to the needs of the playground
director. Holidays local or national may be
made memorable by its adoption : Indepen-
dence Day or the birthday of Daniel Boone
may be made real to the children. High
lights appear upon the solid color of the rou-
tine ; children and parents are interested ; the
whole is knit together into a new vitality.

Apart from the playground, the pageant has
had a great development in America, but
before tracing that growth in any detail, let
us look at certain other indications of the same
spirit. There are village celebrations on the
Fourth of July, with a common set of fireworks
and diversions. I have heard a whole village
sing familiar hymns in the town hall on a
summer Sunday in a little Maine town : I
have joined the crowd round Mr. Harry Earn-
hardt and lifted my voice with the others who
a moment before were, like me, mere passers-
by. During the last decade many towns have
adopted the practice of lighting a Christmas
tree out of doors in some conspicuous place.

28 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

No one who has wandered up Beacon Hill
from the crowded Church of the Advent, to
listen again to the clear voices of the carollers
outside Saint Margaret's, will ever forget the
joy of the soft snow under his feet, and the
tingle of the Christmas air. The illuminated
windows of every house on the hill are a spoken
welcome. And when, after lustily singing on
the Common round the blazing tree, the friendly
crowd pauses to hear trumpeters announcing
Christmas Day from the porch of Saint Paul's
Cathedral, the feeling of community enjoy-
ment is complete. In New York, the Christmas
tree in Madison Square was accompanied, in
1915, by the performance of a Christmas
pantomime (of which pictures are given in
these pages) by Mr. Stewart Walker's Port-
manteau Theatre, erected there for that pur-
pose. The five thousand spectators stood as
entranced in the snow as if they had been sitting
in the luxury of an enticing Little Theatre !

But because of its peculiarly adaptable
nature, the pageant has manifested more than
any other phenomena the desire of the com-
munity for unity and expression. Pageants

PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 29

have existed always : to discover tlie first we
must pass into the time when history was un-
recorded. Any event presented an excuse.
During the Middle Ages, these spectacles be-
came elaborate and usual. The entry of
royalty into a city, a birth, a christening, a
betrothal or marriage, the return of a vic-
torious army, or the birthday of a favorite,
might be celebrated by the disporting of the
populace. In the history of France and of
England the outlines of many colorful pageants
are preserved, with plates representing the
richness of the costumes and elaborate de-
scriptions of the gorgeous trappings. The
whole city, young, old, tradespeople, nobles,
and paupers, joined in these revels : the aim
was to let every one share the common emotion.
Nor is the aim of the modern pageant differ-
ent, but it has added a corollary : the new
pageant strives to unite the body politic })y
means of the celebration of its general joy.
The Master of the Revels, the Lortl of Misrule,
has been superseded by a new master, who with
the functions of his forerunner has combined
the ambition of the statesman. His pageant

30 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

celebrates a day of public rejoicing, fitly and
beautifully, but at the same time it must quicken
the community consciousness, it must revive
fellowship and the common ambitions of the
component parts.

The history of the pageant as an art form in
America actually goes back to the beginnings
of the oldest colony : the Merry Mount Revels
appeared in 1627. But although there were
sporadic instances during the first two hundred
years of our growth (in the Revolutionary War
British soldiers gave a pageant in Philadelphia),
the first use of the name, and the earliest cele-
bration in the form by which we characterize
our pageants was in Marietta, Ohio. In 1888
this romantic town was the scene of a pageant,
actually called by the name, in which incidents
from its own vivid history were represented.
However, the development of the pageant did
not steadily follow the initiative of Marietta.
It was not until after Mr. Parker's brilliant
successes in England — Sherborne, Winchester,
Oxford, and Bury St. Edmunds — that the
enthusiasm on this side of the Atlantic was
strong enough to make pageants numerous.

PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 31

As the number of pageants increased in our
cities, the form became in a measure locah'zed.
The pageants of the revival of pageantry, set
in motion when Mr. Parker in England created
the Pageant of Sherborne, were, as I have said,
loosely connected series of historical scenes.
There was usually some allegorical symbolical
figure or chorus by which they were joined, but
this device had little value in itself. When,
on the other hand, pageantry became a
frequent adventure of the American people,
the symbolical element was magnified. In
Mr. Parker's pageants there is a glorification
of the past : in Mr. MacKaye's pageant-
masque there is a promise for the future through
the reviewing of the past. No doubt the
Puritan blood which flows so strongly in the
veins of America has some part in this ten-
dency : it may also be caused by the fact that
we are accustomed to think of ourselves as a
nation with a future rather than a past ; but
the desire of the makers of the new pageant
to knit the community into a better whole by
m<'ans of it is also a fundamental reason.
Whatever causes and forces have contributed

32 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

to this result, the symbolical character of the
American pageant is its most vital factor,
and from the symbolical pageant we have
developed a new form, the pageant-masque.

From the year 1911, the list of pageants
grows increasingly varied ; large and small
towns vie for first place in enthusiasm ; towns
and cities represented spread from California
to Massachusetts : no occasion seems to be
neglected. The Peterborough Pageant in
memory of Edward MacDowell, the Glouces-
ter Pageant, the Pageant of Wisconsin, the
Pageant of the Northwest — one treads upon
the heels of the other. But the Municipal
Pageant of St. Louis in 1914 has in a measure
established a valuable precedent, because its
proportions were so huge and impressive.

The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis has
been published, but to the student of the
sociological theatre the report of committees
compiled after the production is even more
interesting. This brief pamphlet is a paean of
praise. To read it is like listening to festival
music ; voice follows voice in lifting strain
after strain of joy, and the solos are supported

PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 33

by a chorus of thousands — the citizens who
made the celebration a success. The bare
statement of work accompHshed is a revelation
of what demands the venture made : no
channel of usefulness was left untapped : every
thread of service was gladly woven into the
web. But behind the setting down of facts
there is the same spirit in the reports made by
those committee chairmen that was clear in
the reading of the masque and the pageant ^
the spirit of service, the spirit of fellowship,
the spirit of brotherhood.

Other cities have accepted the challenge of
St. Louis ; last season New York, and Newark,
New Jersey, made use of the community
pageant and masque. Already the banner is
going forward. The spirit of neighborliness
which gathered city children into playgrounds
has flourished there, and the breath of brother-
hood is blowing across the land.

CHAPTER III

Sociological Theatre: Caliban

Caliban by the Yellow Sands, Mr. MacKaye's
masque in honor of the three hundredth anni-
versary of the death of William Shakespeare,
was presented in the City of New York in 1916.
It was far more ambitious than any previous
civic attempt, for New York is of all cities the
most complex, the most varied in population,
the most volatile : to unite her shifting thou-
sands into even a momentary unity seems
beyond belief or imagination. But the in-
troduction of the new art form to the great city
was a strategical masterstroke. In this coun-
try no work of art may hope for acceptance as
long as it lacks the stamp of metropolitan
genuineness. If New York has seen it, the
others will see it. Had New York withheld
her attention, no heights of technical finesse
could have made up for the loss. Therefore

34

CALIBAN 35

it demands especial attention in the steady
advance of the community theatre.

But Caliban has other claims to importance
beside the accident that New York witnessed
its birth : Caliban is interesting in itself, as
an exponent of the new form of dramatic ex-
pression which Democracy is hewing from the
rock of her people. This form is in its infancy.
We cannot say to what lengths the pageant-
masque may go. Caliban was groping. In the
art of the theatre a new technique of expression
cannot be molded behind the curtains and
flashed upon the stage fully finished : to do
this would be to reckon without the audience.
The artists of the theatre must submit their
"rough drafts" to the good will of the audience,
must watch the feelings of the audience with
beating heart, and must remodel until the
summit of perfection is reached.

The great size of the Shakespeare masque
(its popular name) makes it unusually valuable
as an example ; every proportion is magnified,
and its beauties and blemishes alike are more
clearly revealed.

New York flung herself with an enthusiasm

36 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

ainoiintiiig {iliiiost to passion into the celebrat-
ing of Shakespeare's anniversary. The idea
arose from the annual meeting of the Drama
League of America, and the local centre of the
Drama League in New York was responsible
for the appointment of a committee to manage
the celebration in that city. With the assist-
ance of prominent people (his Honor the Mayor
made it official), a great campaign was started
to have the three hundredth year since Shake-
speare's death memorable for proofs of the
vitality of his work. His deathlessness was
to be attested by great and small, professional
and amateur productions of his plays ; dis-
cussions of every question connected with his
life and writing were to be encouraged ; the
series of lectures and readings were endless.
Finally, as a climax, a great out-of-door festival
was to be given, celebrating in as fit a fashion
as possible the debt which we owe through
life and art to the master-dramatist.

It was an amazing conception. And the
complexity of the committee's organization
is staggering. It far outreaches the work of
that triumphant pageant committee in St.

CALIBAN 37

Louis. Public schools, private schools,
churches, recreatiou ceutres, parks, colleges,
clubs, libraries, and the profession of the
theatre were enlisted. The limits to which
cooperation can be carried seem to have been
reached when we hear of the sick children in
Bellevue Hospital learning Ariel's song from
the Tempest, and sitting propped against pillows
in their little beds to sew a pasted Shakespeare
picture book !

The final celebration, the culmination of all
these thousands of minor festivities, was to be
one which united all the arts of the theatre,
and it was with this aim in view that Mr, Mac-
Kay e wrote Caliban for the occasion. In order
to understand wherein the masque fell below
and wherein it far surpassed the hopes of its
originators, let us look for a moment at the
outline as it was published in the official pro-
gramme.

De.scriptioii of the Masque

ACTION

The action takes f)lace, symbolically, on
three ])lanes :

38 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

[1] In the cave of Setebos [before and after
its transformation into the theatre of Pros-
peroj ;

[2] In the mind of Prospero [behind the
Cloudy Curtains of the Inner Stage] ; and

[SJ On the ground-circle of "the Yellow
Sands" [the place of historic time].

TIME

The Masque Proper is concerned, symboli-
cally, with no definite period of time, but with
the waxing and waning of the life of Dramatic
Art from primitive barbaric times to the verge
of the living present.

The interludes are concerned with ritualistic
glimpses of the art of the theatre during three
historical periods: [1] Antiquity, [2] the Middle
Ages, and [3] Elizabethan England.

The Epilogue is concerned with the creative
forces of dramatic art from antiquity to the
present, and — by suggestion — with the
future of those forces.

SETTING

The setting of the Masque is not a back-
ground of natural landscape as in the case of
most outdoor pageants, but is architectural
and scenic. Being constructed technically for
performance on a large scale, by night only,
its basic appeals are to the eye, through expert
illusions of light and darkness, architectural
and plastic line, the dance, color, and pageantry

CALIBAN 39

of group movements ; to the ear, through in-
visible choirs, orchestral and instrumental
music.

The Masque Proper is enacted by profes-
sional actors, who, by their speech, give the
motives of the large scale pantomime in the
Interludes.

The Interludes unfold the theme in dances,
pageantry, choruses and pantomime, by hun-
dreds of community performers. In the
Epilogue the professional actors and the
numerous community performers unite.

Corresponding to this Inner Structure is
the Outer Structure, which consists of three
stages :

[1] A modified form of Elizabethan stage,
here called the Middle Stage, which is a raised
platform, and to which steps lead from the
Ground Circle.

[2] The Inner Stage, shut off from the
Middle Stage by Cloudy Curtains, which,
when drawn, reveal the Inner Shakespearean
Scenes conceived in the mind of Prospero.

[3] The Ground Circle, between the Middle
Stage and the Audience, resembling in form the
"Orchestra" of a Greek theatre.

Beneath the Middle Stage, and between the
Steps which lead up to it from the Ground
Circle, is situated, at centre, the mouth of
Caliban's cell, which thus opens directly upon
the Yellow Sands.

All of these features of the setting, however,
are invisible when the Masque begins, and are

40 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

only revealed as the lightings of the action
disclose them.

Synopsis of Masque

GENERAL THEME

The four principal characters of the Masque,
Caliban, Ariel, Miranda, and Prospero, are
derived from those of Shakespeare's play "The
Tempest." Through these characters the
general theme is developed.

The theme of the Masque is the slow edu-
cation of mankind through the influences of
cooperative art, that is, of the theatre in its
full social scope.

This theme of cooperation is expressed
earliest in the Masque through the lyric of
Ariel's spirits,

"Come unto these Yellow Sands
And then take hands."

It is sounded with central stress, in the
chorus of peace, when the Kings clasp hands
on the Field of the Cloth of Gold ; and with
final emphasis in the gathering together of the
creative forces of dramatic art in the Epilogue
and the final speech of Caliban to the spirit
of Shakespeare.

Space in which to trace the many incidents
of the action fails in so brief a review; the
reader who wishes to follow the education of

CALIBAN 41

the brute may seek the published version of
the masque. It will well repay his attention.
There is in the reading a unity of effect which
was lost in the huge proportions of the pro-
duction : the reader becomes Caliban, learning
from the colorful pageant of the author's
imaging how, throughout ages of time, the arts
of the theatre have shown that man is spirit.
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on — "
The education of mankind, in Mr, MacKaye's
conception, is twofold, consisting both in the
inspiration which comes through the minds
of poets and dreamer-artists, and in growth
under the action of cooperation. Caliban, the
brute part of man, is taught by the spirit which
is the servant of the artist ; he sees a vision, he
strives to realize what he sees, and then again
is shown another vision, rousing him to new
effort and new achievement. So far all is
clear: the scenes from Shakespeare, illustrat-
ing the flashes of vision through the artist,
were conjured up for Caliban and, one after
the other, showed a definite effect upon him ;
the pageant of history, passing in Ihe great
central ring of the amphitheatre — the arts

42 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

of the theatre in the broad sense including
song and dance — swept by to show how men
had played together. Caliban crept on his
belly, then stood totteringly erect, and learned
to walk like a man : Lust, War, and Death
were overcome one by one, and Time rose to
promise more than had been accomplished.
But in spite of the beauty and the grandeur
of the production, as it was given in the circle
of the Stadium of the College of the City of
New York, I found it not as satisfying as the
reading had been, and far less complete than
the jumbled rehearsal which it had been my
privilege to witness several nights before the
first performance.

The causes of this imperfection are so closely
associated with the audience, and are so im-
portant in a social as well as an artistic sense,
that, far from being out of place in the dis-
cussion, they are necessary to our argument.
For instance, the great audience was in itself
a keen disappointment. It lacked the con-
centration and coherence which is the most
impressive quality in a crowd which fills a
great stadium for a football game : it was ill

CALIBAN 43

at ease, nervous, restless, self-conscious, curious,
thoughtless, and diffuse. Only a small frac-
tion of the thousands who flocked into the
oval of seats had even seen a stadium filled
with people : the- vastness of the assembly,
the amazing rapidity with which things hap-
pened, the mysterious sensation of listening
to voices which came from a block away —
all these new experiences created a strangeness
which called for some great unifying emotion
to weld the thousand wandering minds into
one mind. One such moment did come near
the middle of the action, a moment which
stood out above all others as the fiery cross,
which symbolized it, flamed out above every
other scenic effect.

Caliban, from howling brutishly on his
belly, had been raised to the dignity of wearing
the trappings of art, through the teaching of
his master. Full of confidence, he grasped the
magic wand, himself to conjure up a vision.
At first he was successful ; then, moved by the
vision of Brutus to a memory of what he had
seen in the revels of Caligula, he lifted his
wand and voice, and brutish once more, sum-

44 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

moned the forces of Lust, the servant of his
ancient god and father. They flocked in from
the shadows where the old god's priests were
hirking, up from the grass and from the golden
sands of Time, and overran the masque stage,
the Temple of Art, in a glorious sordid rush.
The defenders of art crouched helpless against
the pillars of the defiled temple ; it seemed that
the Spirit of Beauty, the daughter of the artist,
would be torn from her shrine and defiled.
Then, to the sound of trumpets triumphant,
flashed against the sky the Cross, and in the
inner stage, where things of the mind were
revealed, appeared the vision of Saint Agnes
and her lamb, and A Shepherd, who proved
to be the Master- Artist himself.

It was a great moment ; without exception
opinion has judged it the greatest, I think.
The reason is fundamental and of the most
vital importance. At this instant there was
one centre of action, not three, as there were
even when only one centre of action was being
used, and the movement shifted among them.
For the most part, the spoken word of the
masque was concentrated upon the great masque

CALIBAN 45

stage, the pageant of Time swept by in the
great yellow circle, and the flashes of Shake-
speare were shown by the opening of curtains
at the very back of all. But, at the point of
which I speak, the vision of the artist stirred
the brute to action; he in turn roused the mob
into actual participation in the masque-move-
ment, destructive but still action — to be
stilled once more by the flash of an inspira-
tion, pictured in the area sacred to mind. And
this clash, bringing the most unified and the
most emotional moment of the masque, gave
the audience its biggest thrill, a fact which
points clearly to the one weakness of the
conception and stage management.

The whole fundamental idea in Caliban,
just like the fundamental conception of a
community theatre, is the value in education
and growth, not only of seeing, but of feeling
and of doing. Mankind, stirred by imagina-
tion through the inspiration of a seer, acts, and
so learns. So Caliban should not merely have
watched the pageant of Time, as it passed
before him, at the word of the artist. The
visions of the artist were the flashes of spirit

46 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

which reached even his sordidiiess, but the
action on the sands of time — the Egyptians
writhing in rehgious ecstasy, the Greeks re-
joicing in the joy of perfect physical beauty,
and the Romans flinging the pearls of art
before the swine of low desires, all these were
not pictures thrown upon a screen for Caliban
to watch. They were Caliban. Caliban, wor-
shiping the gods of ancient Egypt with dance
and rhythmic motion, Caliban reaching sum-
mits of art, but with his feet still the feet of a
monster, and finally, Caliban succumbing to
the old monstrous strength and weakness.
We could have wished to see him thus clothed
in the garments of Time, and "taking hands,
upon these yellow sands." In this way the
continuity, which is so evident in reading Mr.
MacKaye's play, would have been apparent
in the mammoth production.

Curiously enough, the rehearsal — dis-
jointed, disorganized, fragmentary, and un-
finished — gave a feeling of unity that the
performance failed to give. The memory of
it will linger long in my mind as the exponent
of the Masque Idea.

CALIBAN 47

Dusk was falling over the Stadium of the
College of the City of New York. The horse-
shoe of seats, curiously knit together of wood
and cement, was empty, suggesting for the
moment some dream of antiquity, some reminis-
cence of the Roman amphitheatre awaiting the
spectacle of lions or of gladiators. From the
flat end, where a stage had been built, the
hoarse shouts of the master-carpenter rose
over the hollow beats of a hammer. The
great face of Setebos, a painted horror, still
wet, grinned up at groups of boys and girls
who began to straggle in through the narrow
stage entrances to the grass ring in the centre.
Over in one corner an energetic game of base
ball proved that this was not the Roman
Empire, but the United States of America.

Behind the stage there was bustle, but little
confusion. Tickets were given out by assist-
ants, and a line had formed before a window
marked "Costumes", while in the dressing-
rooms activity was beginning, and the First
Aid tent awaited patronage.

With the coming of darkness the continually
augmented groups were drawn into a solid whole.

48 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

Each group formed a quiet audience to the per-
formances of the others, waiting with extraor-
dinary patience for the call which mobilized
their "turn." The services of the brisk ushers
were rarely needed to quiet disturbance or
to hush talking. Through a megaphone the
director from a platform encouraged, ha-
rangued, and exhorted the hundreds of actors
who were taking part in the interludes.

A rehearsal, even a complete rehearsal, is
curiously lacking in proportion and in emphasis.
But here was a rehearsal only half costumed, in
which episodes followed each other without
attempt at logic. Now youths in Greek tunics
swept across the field, half revealed in the dim
light, swaying and moving like some animation
of an old frieze. They were followed, in
comical contrast, by a man in a well-cut over-
coat and derby hat, who rode in a chariot of
exotic design, drawn by half-naked slaves,
and balancing across his knee a Roman dancing
maiden whose companions ran after the pro-
cession with little cries. Then, with a sudden
change, they were gone, and the field was
flooded with new figures. They moved

CALIBAN 49

steadily, slowly, with increasing precision to
the jigging strains of the Tides well Morris
Dance : they came on and on until there
seemed to be no end. These were Shake-
speare's own merrymakers, come to set up the
Maypole of Jollity on the shores of our Puritan
land. And, as if recognizing their importance,
the quiet watchers in the shadows burst into
applause wdiich echoed through the spaces of
the great stadium like a prophecy.

Meanwhile, — unaware of the presence of any
one else, — the persons of the masque proper
were busy with their lines and action upon
the nearly finished stage. Over the whole,
the electrician sent flashes of magical light, and
the chorus, invisible above the stage, some-
times accompanied the action, and some-
times wandered away at its own sweet will.

From every reasonable point of view, the
effect should have been a hodgepodge. And to
the tired workers who had been struggling so
long to make a colierent whole, it no doubt
seemed a nightmare. For weeks many of
them had sacrificed their evenings, coming to
rehearsals under difficulties, and returning

50 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

wearily to beds from which the ordinary busi-
ness of the day would call them promptly the
next morning. The work was done not easily,
but with an effort, and because of the sacrifice
and difficulty which they represented, the
pictures were strung one after the other upon the
spirit of fellowship as beads hang upon a silken
thread. Underneath and through the medley
throbbed the inspiration of a great cooperative
feeling.

. There was a friendly neighborliness about the
entire gathering which seemed as out of place
in New York as, a baby carriage in Times
Square. Nothing pleasant and friendly was
surprising. A slim lady in Egyptian draperies
was accosted in the shadowy region behind the
scenes by an Elizabethan maiden who proved
to be a college classmate. Not even the slight-
est greeting passed between them, merely a
brisk, casual question and answer. "Oh,
Ann," cried the newcomer, "have you seen
Marjorie Trump?" "Not since Class day!"
was the calm reply. "I am sorry." And
the Egyptian lady passed into her dress-
ing room without realizing that it had been

CALIBAN 51

an equal length of time since she greeted her
questioner !

Even more unusual perhaps was the country-
town joviahty which prevailed among the
audience. Those thousands had a genuine in-
terest, and a curiosity which was far from idle.
The friendly flock on the Broadway car which
carried me northward might have been migrat-
ing toward the circus on an annual outing.
They were chatty. They laughed at the lack
of seats, even at the lack of standing room.
Every one felt that this was a holiday, for his
neighbor as well as for himself. But chief of
them all was the genial conductor. He begged
the packed passengers to "step up forward",
with patently false promises of "more room up
front." lie argued that by stepping forward
they would be that much nearer " the show."
He crowded in dozens where there should have
been two or three ; he threatened, coaxed,
and wheedled until the car was shaken with
quick ripples of laughter. At every stop he
called with genial deference to warn a crushed
little woman huddled against the door, "Are
ye ready, lady dear?" in order that she

5^2 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

niiglit not drop out as the door opened. In
leaving, I expressed the desire that the conductor
might be going with us all. He shook his gray
head vigorously. "Sure," he answered blithely,
with a smile which would have delighted the
organizers of the masque could they have seen
it, "who would bring them all up here, if I went
gallivantin'?"

Then too, the bus which carried me away from
the spectacle was filled with people who were
talking of Caliban. Some were pleased, others
unmoved, and one or two frankly puzzled; but
they were all eager to discuss what they had
seen. " Can you tell me what it was all about ? "
one woman anxiously asked me. I handed her
a programme instead of answering, pointing
to certain lines ; whereupon, above the noise of
the jolting, she read the synopsis of the action
aloud, and we all listened.

However, the faults of this greatest commu-
nity festival which we have attempted are less
important than the promise which it carried of
progress to better and greater achievement.
The technique of the spectacle-drama will
change; the fundamental conception will not

CALIBAN 53

often, I think, be as purely intellectual as the one
which was destined to do honor to Shakespeare.
Thus the audience will become accustomed to
thinking of itself in the large terms necessary
under the arch of heaven and the stars. But
surely the drama of the community will become
not an occasional occurrence, not a sporadic
growth, but a national institution. Caliban
has opened the door into an unexplored garden,
rich with no one knows what fruits. The com-
munity masque is one of the many signs which
point indisputably to the establishment of a
community theatre, for the community masque
has proved valuable in bringing out temporarily
the qualities in the community which we seek,
by means of the community theatre, to establish
permanently. The joy of play, the joy of co-
operation, the expression of joy through art,
the pleasure of creation, the unifying force of a
common interest, all were evident in the masque.
In a connnunity tlieatre they would be continued
instead of lapsing at the end of one artistic
blooming. The masque is the ai)ple tree which
flowers in the spring; the theatre is like the
orange, rich perpetually in blooms and in fruit !

CHAPTER IV

Little Theatres

What is often called "The Little Theatre
Movement" is vigorous in this country, al-
though it is young. Because it covers a short
period of time, and because it is less a definite
movement than a number of sporadic and inde-
pendent protests against an existing condition
which grope toward a common goal still vague
— for all these reasons, generalizations about
the Little Theatre are apt to prove premature
judgments. However, it may safely be asserted
that the enthusiasm for small theatres indepen-
dent of the organization which we call "the com-
mercial theatre" is like the spirit which initiates
the pageant and the community masque, evi-
dence of the awakening of the American audi-
ence to active participation in the art of
the theatre. In certain places interest in
the dramatic expression of common emotion

54

LITTLE THEATRES 55

has taken the form of the pageant or the pageant-
masque. In others the emotion has been con-
fined to a smaller space and fewer people, and
the results have lasted a longer time by means
of some locally organized theatrical enterprise.
Each is a definite step toward the establishment
of the institution to be the ultimate fulfilment
of both desires — the community theatre.

To trace the history of the Little Theatre from
its beginnings on the continent, fascinating as
it would be, is not my purpose here. Just what
social and artistic influences have been brought
to bear on, let us say, the Prairie Playhouse of
Galesburg, Illinois, by such theatres as Antoine's
and Reinhardt's, or by the New Free Folk
Stage in Berlin (to which several managements
refer with admiration) would be an interesting
problem, but one which would prove, I think,
insoluble. The history of the Little Theatre is
unimportant as yet ; we must think of the
future and the present rather than of the past.

For convenience I have placed in the Appen-
dix a list of the Little Theatres of America, It
is as complete as possible. At this time of
expansion, the list must necessarily fail to

5G THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

include some of the newest ventures ; no doubt
since the compilation fresh Little Theatres have
come into being, and it may be that valuable
but unadvertised efforts have escaped my no-
tice. Most fervently do I hope so, for it is from
these simple, unsophisticated places that the
theatre will draw most strength. However,
such examples as have come to my hand fall
naturally into two classes : just as the theatre
has been divided by the footlights into artists
and audience, so the new theatres have had their
origin upon one side or the other of that same
line; on the one hand there are organizations
which owe their existence to the inspiration of
some artist, and on the other there are those
which came from a social need visualized by an
outstanding figure or figures in the audience or
social body. These two classes might be called
the Art Theatres_and the Economic Theatres in
order that they may be distinguished.

Of the first type I shall speak briefly. They
have been largely a reflection of the new art of
the theatre as it was known in France, in Ger-
many, and in Russia. They are half-measures.
But they are not for that reason to be in the least

LITTLE THEATRES 57

condemned ; rather they are to be encouraged
and commended, not because "half-a-loaf is
better than no bread ", but because as half-
measures they are a long step toward the thing
for which we are struggHng. It is a bright
prognostication that when we look for instances
of spontaneous and apparently isolated attempts
to bring something fresh and lovely into the
theatre, we find many shrines with ardent wor-
shippers. There is a Little Theatre in Balti-
more and one in Los Angeles ; Louisville, Ken-
tucky, has one, and so has a tiny settlement at
Blue Hill, Maine. As far as it is possible to
tell, the beginnings have been practically con-
temporaneous. The difference of a few months
in the dates of founding may be disregarded.

But, in spite of a class similarity, there is
great variety in the details of the organization
of these Little Theatres. Many of the asso-
ciations are limited by the size of their place of
production to a narrow list of subscribers, who
make up the small audience and whose annual
subscriptions furnish funds for the productions.
Casts for such theatres seem usually to be either
professional actors or talented amateurs who

58 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

come from without as well cas within the cor-
porate body. Such a theatre was The Toy
of Boston, when it flourished in Mrs. Gale's
erstwhile stable in Lime Street. The Vagabond
Players suffer a similar limitation in their little
converted barroom, of which a photograph is
included in this volume. If the playhouse holds
only sixty-two persons, the clientele cannot be
too varied !

Artistically, the very smallness of our Little
Playhouses has produced surprisingly big re-
sults. The Little Theatres have influenced the
arts of the theatre — the arts of scene-painting
and of acting, especially — much more than we
realize. Nothing could be as convincing an
argument for simplicitj^ as the intimacy of a
tiny theatre; the scene must be cleared of too
much detail and clutter, and the action must be
restrained and perfectly simple. Mr. Livingston
Piatt, from The Toy Theatre, Mr. Raymond
Johnson, from The Chicago Little Theatre, Mr.
Frank Zimmerer, whose early work was done in
settlement houses, are names of weight even in
professional circles : they have been trained in
a hard school where distance must be a matter

LITTLE THEATRES 59

of perspective, illusion, and light, and they
learned to make magic from that training.
Whatever may be said about freeing art from the
bonds of convention, it is conceded, I believe,
that limitations serve as a goad to an artist in
his apprenticeship. And the narrow prosce-
nium, the lack of space, the closeness of the
audience, all call for skill and ingenuity which
the harassed worker seldom appreciates at the
moment of the struggle. The_acting_too Jia&_
been simplified, and the actor has often been
given opportunities of experiment and variety
in his interpretation which the methods of our
professional theatre forbid.

But what was fortunate in the artistic light
has been unlucky from the social angle. In-
stead of social theatres, we have had society
theatres, a wholly different matter. Naturally,
the fostering group, in many cases, has been the
group which has leisure, and that group is the
one which is most sophisticated, most influenced
by the tradition of the old theatre and of the old
world, the one which has least need of an outlet
for emotion, and which does not suffer from the
lack of beauty. Not long ago in a small city

GO THE COMIVITINITY THEATRE

rich in tradition and in history, far removed
from the centres of artistic Hfe, and teeming
with youth and enthusiasm, certain intelHgent
people were discussing an entertainment to ac-
company the municipal Christmas tree. The
most eager of them all — the arbiter eligantia-
rum — shook her head regretfully. "We could
not do it," she said, with discouragement in her
face and voice, " it is too difficult to persuade the
young people to take part even in a small
performance. If we want financial support, we
must have people in our plays who can bring
their families, and debutantes have so many
parties that they are bored l)y the suggestion."
And instantly there came to my mind the story
told by Mrs. Henniger of a little girl who was
backward in her class at school, shy, ill at ease,
and seemingly stupid, until she was put into a
cast of The Little Princess. There she was one
of the children at the "party." As rehearsals
progressed, her shyness vanished. The little
girls were encouraged to work out each her own
individual action, and the little shy one, who
could not dance, wept bitterly for fear she might
be sent away. But when she was told that she

LITTLE THEATRES 61

could think of something to do herself, her little
brain scurried about, and she triumphantly
suggested that she might turn the leaves of the
music for the girl who played the piano! The
fact that she was "promoted" that term in
school may not have helped the door receipts of
The Little Princess, but it certainly had a value.
And what a contrast she offers to the debu-
tantes who are so busy with parties that they
have no time for a thing of beauty ! Surely there
is no limitation so rigid and unyielding as the
barrier set up by "Society." To make the
Little Theatre unfailingly useful, it must be
freed from that bond.

Another type of the Art Little Theatre which
has contributed not a little to our art of the
theatre is that which is subsidized by a patron,
such as The Los Angeles Little Theatre, and
The Lake Forest Players, and several tiny sum-
mer theatres in the villages of New England.
Most of these have a purely local importance, I
think, and thejefore do not call for especial at-
tention here. But one which flourishes under
a benevolent despotism has made itself so
noticed that we must pause and examine it in

62 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

some detail — I mean The Neighborhood Play-
house in New York.

The Neighborhood Playhouse, in a city full
of theatres, far away in a quiet corner, on the
pitiful, promise-blessed East Side of the great
city, has made more than one commercial pro-
ducer squirm under the glare of his spotlight.
Unlike many or most of the Little Theatres in
our country, it has a deep root in so funda-
mental a thing as race : in its purely neighbor-
hood manifestation, it gives exquisite expression
to the beauty sleeping in the mind of the long
silenced Jewish people. The neighborhood of
which the theatre is the mouthpiece is the
crowded and stifled one which huddles round the
Nurses' Settlement in Henry Street. For years
the work in dramatic classes has been laying a
foundation upon which the beauty of The
Neighborhood Playhouse has been based. The
art classes, the sewing classes, and other
branches of the Settlement have made con-
tributions. The generous founders are young
women who give not only a liberal endowment
of money but of taste and imagination as well,
besides strenuous, continued, mental and physi-

LITTLE THEATRES 63

cal labor. They desire ardently that the theatre
express all that is fine in the ancient and modern
life of the people. Beautiful old Jewish rituals
have been revived, bright with color and swing-
ing with the joyful motion of the East, to take
a place beside much that is excellent in modern
dramatic writing. An occasional play has been
given in Yiddish. The settings are unfailingly
interesting and often very beautiful. The
personnel of the cast is prevailingly of the neigh-
borhood, and although top hats do appear there,
the audience is chiefly drawn from the Lower
East Side.

A performance in The Neighborhood Play-
house is never stupid to the student. It may
be an interesting experiment, and often it is
an achievement of definite artistic value. But
the general policy of the playhouse is the Settle-
ment policy. Unusual artistic fare is provided
for the community under the leadership of
women of high ideals, but that fare is, after all,
given. The underlying spirit of the place is a
benevolent one : the people work together, they
give expression to emotions of their race, but
they are never free. It may be that the need.

64 THE COIVIMUNITY THEATRE

in the situation in which The Neighborhood
Playhouse finds itself, is for such an educational
and protective organization. The young people
of Grand Street are part of New York, and many
of them are totally unfit for the life of that city.
It is not my intention to criticize the evident
good which has been accomplished by Settlements
in great cities, but their policy is acknowledged
to be one of expediency. They are the First
Aid class of Social Science. They put the in-
jured member into a splint, but do not set it.
After the First Aider must come one who will
make it possible for Nature to finish the work
of healing ! So the force of humanity is always
making achievement, under the guidance of
some great constructor who leads without di-
recting. To return to our special instance,
The Neighborhood Theatre will realize the ideal
of a community theatre only when it becomes
a self-governing body. Until that time it may
do excellent work, but it is not providing for its
own future. And although this change would
mean a temporary lowering of the artistic level
which it undoubtedly has set for itself, it would
substitute an ever broadening horizon.

LITTLE THEATRES 65

Still a third division are those theatres which
have taken impetus from the success in England
and on the Continent, of playhouses with a
municipal endowment. At Northampton one
has continued for several years to furnish en-
tertainment for the undergraduates and faculty
of Smith College as well as for the inhabitants
of the Massachusetts manufacturing town : and
in Pittsfield another with a similar endowment
— the shares are owned by wealthy citizens —
is equally successful. These theatres are, of
course, professional, and they take their key-
note from Broadway, slightly tinged with popu-
lar intellectualism. They often do good work,
and express in a certain measure the tastes of
the audience, but they are not the possession of
the audience as the community theatre should
be the possession of the community.

Several attemi)ts have been made to establish
repertory theatres in this country. The New
Theatre in New York combined with a repertory
idea the general aim of the theatre of the com-
munity magnified to national terms. The ex-
plosion of the notion that a national theatre
could be superimposed, which came with the

06 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

failure of The New Theatre, was the contribu-
tion of that organization to the history of the
theatre. Later, in Boston, a repertory attempt
was made under the title of the Henry Jewett
Players, but the organization as it now exists
is on the basis of a stock rather than of a reper-
tory company. Finally, in New York once
more. Miss Grace George made a considerable
degree of success with one season of repertory
at The Playhouse in Forty-eighth Street, and it
is to be regretted that it has not been continued.
But the repertory theatre — whatever oppor-
tunities it may offer to artists of the theatre — ■
is not the final goal when it is unconnected with
the community. And the municipal theatre,
financed by a few shareholders for the benefit of
a town or city, is not completely enough of the
community to satisfy the most pressing demands.
Here and there are theatres which call them-
selves experimental. One of the earliest of these
was Professor Baker's "47 Workshop" which —
taking its numerical name from "English 47, —
Technique of the Drama", as listed in the
catalogue of Harvard University — was es-
tablished to provide a dramatic laboratory

LITTLE THEATRES 67

for the students of Professor Baker's well-
known course. There in the insufficient theatre
of Radcliffe College, the plays which are being
written under Professor Baker's guidance are
given a hearing to an audience composed of in-
terested people whose written criticisms are a
valuable part of the routine. Here everything
is for the benefit of the author, or, as Professor
Baker himself writes: "What I should like to
have particularly emphasized is that the 47
Workshop is not simply a place for the trying-
out of our plays, but that it is a place where
anybody who has anything to offer in the
theatrical arts may have a hearing. We have
at present new and promising people at work
on theatrical design and costumes, training in
acting, and in all the departments behind the
curtain. We have recently established a Book-
shop on the evenings of the performances, at
which any published plays of the Harvard
Dramatic Club or the 47 Workshop maybe had."
This workshop idea of Professor Baker's has
been developed by one of his pupils in a most in-
teresting way at the University of North Dakota.
Professor Frederick Koch went out from Har-

68 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

vard to a field which is infinitely riclier in dra-
matic promise because it is nearer to a simple
and unsophisticated manner of living, and he has
with great wisdom clung as closely as he has
been able to the life of his prairie workmen. So
vigorous is the work of the Sock and Buskin
Society upon which the producing of plays falls,
that Professor Koch is able to write, " In these
few years it has been demonstrated to us that
practically the first generation of Americans
from the soil, from our prairie pioneers, can
translate its own thrilling life into new dramatic
and literary forms — convincing and beautiful,
and promising much toward a genuinely native
art yet to come."

Perhaps the most interesting of all Professor
Koch's innovations, however, are the coopera-
tive pageants which he has produced upon his
lovely outdoor stage. These were the work not
of one man but of a class of twenty, working
in close and eager consultation, and yet they
read most convincingly. The celebration of
the Shakespeare Tercentenary was the occasion
for a pageant-masque in which the Master
Playwright was shown influenced by the strange

LITTLE THEATRES 69

news of far-away America, thus tying North
Dakota to the days of good Queen Bess — as
was fitting and proper. Here is a community
laboratory : here is a lesson for universities, and
a great lesson for the community theatre when it
shall find itself in action.

The West, because it lacks so many posses-
sions of the East, is bound to have many things
for which the East may not hope. A rural
theatre is one of these, where plays are produced
for the country folk, and which is in a measure
a strolling players' group. This too is in North
Dakota, and it is under the management of Mr.
Arvold and the Agricultural College in Fargo.
I shall say more of the universities of the West
in a future chapter.

The rural theatre, rich with promise of joy
and life for the isolated farm dweller, brings me
naturally in my review of the many Little
Theatres to Tlie Portmanteau Theatre of Stuart
Walker. Here is a true revival of the strolling
{)layers ! Mr. Walker's stage packs up in boxes,
and his lovely scenes and magic lighting are sent
about I he country, if not by parcel post, by a
nieihod as expeditious. It is a new form of

70 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

theatre which had its origin strictly within the
professional theatre, for Mr. Walker had a long
training under as conservative a master as Mr.
Belasco, but it has in its fresh youth and en-
thusiasm little of the faults of the theatrical
profession as we know it to-day. And although
it is far removed from any community — it is
the "Theatre without a home" always "on the
branch" — it has a very poignant message for
the community theatre.

First of all, The Portmanteau Theatre has
shown what can be done with little money and
some care and brain — as no other one theatrical
enterprise has done. And in the second place
it has cut loose from much of the paraphernalia
which has been considered an integral part of
theatrical production, and has made the simple
playing of delightful plays as possible in a barn
as on Broadway. Just what the ultimate de-
velopment of Mr. Walker's invention may be it
is not possible to say, but when the community
theatre becomes a reality it will undoubtedly
find The Portmanteau Theatre — or theatres —
its close ally.

In the brief examination given the Art

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LITTLE THEATRES 71

Theatres, one or two instances have been
touched upon which might well come under the
Economic Theatre as well. The Neighborhood
Playhouse is one of these, and Professor Freder-
ick Koch's Laboratory in the Bankside Theatre
at the University of North Dakota is another.
There are many settlement houses where the
Dramatic Club might well be given the dignity
of the title Theatre, but they are too numerous
to require more than mention as a class. One of
them, the Hull House organization, which grew
up from Miss Addams' inspiration at Oberam-
mergau, stands out above the others because
of its age and its achievement ; it has had the
honor of producing for the first time many plays
of a serious, and more especially, of a sociological
nature — Galsworthy's Justice was one.

CHAPTER V

Democratic Institutions

The nature of democracy makes it very diffi-
cult to judge the institutions of democracy,
and to allot to each the measure of praise or of
blame which is its due. Other forms of na-
tional organization have an immediate attain-
ment which constitutes success, and without
it they are failures. It is simple, in history, to
trace the criterion by which to judge monarchies
and empires. The essence of kingship has never
been more perfectly phrased than in the famous
words of Louis the Fourteenth when he said,
"L'etat c'est moi." And when the State ceases
to exist primarily for the king, as soon as the
divine right to rule becomes a matter for ques-
tion — at that moment monarchy begins to
fail. So, in an empire, if the sovereignty of the
empire state is diminished, if the States become
equal in power, the empire ceases. And all in-

72

DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 73

stitutions of a monarchy which do not support
and pander to the power of the king are failures,
just as imperial institutions are failures when
they do not support the central sovereign State.
But the institutions of democracy present a
less simple problem.

Democracy is a dynamic condition. Democ-
racy cannot be static. The very ideal of de-
mocracy implies a goal and a progress as well :
democracy is the growth and the ever-vanishing
attainment. What democracy means we cannot
tell : we see only something toward which we
must strive with the utmost zeal.

What, then, is a democratic institution?
How is it to be tested .^^ In a bureaucracy,
which presents the most natural contrast to a
democratic form of government, the aim is effi-
ciency, the precise smoothness of a well-
fashioned machine. Are we to apply this
standard to the institutions of democracy? It
is done again and again, but are those critics
who expect a mechanically perfect operation
the wisest ? Are they not thoughtless when
they say that our org.'inization is too cumber-
some, our public schools ill-managed, that there

74 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

is waste of public moneys in the administration
of the town and state, that good men avoid
pohtics, and that offices are filled with rascals
under a system depending upon the mass of the
people ? Is it not evident that such criticisms,
no matter how true they may be, are not funda-
mentally a criticism of democracy or of demo-
cratic institutions ?

When we speak of democracy we speak in
terms of the spirit, whereas when we put our
ideals into action we are forced to employ the
means of mind and of body. Let us look for a
moment at the old bromide of democratic phi-
losophy — "All men are created free and ec[ual.'*
How many times during the long march of
human progress has that pillar of fire blazed in
hope against the clouds of tyranny? We are
accustomed to think of it as having its origin
with Christianity; but the earliest barriers
were down even before that time, and century
by century the circle has widened, including
more and more of humanity. Yet now, perhaps
more than ever before, the differences in mental
and moral as well as physical equipment are
evident. Shall we, then, in spite of the varying

X. —

DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 75

heritage, continue to believe that there is any
equality upon earth? Yes, "all men are
created free and equal" is none the less true be-
cause of the manifest inequalities in mankind's
physical, mental, and material birthright. For
freedom and equality are of the spirit, from
which democracy seeks to remove the handicap
by equalizing opportunity of mind and of body,
since spirit is so closely wrapped in its garment
of environment.

Democracy seeks to equalize opportunity.
Opportunity — there is undoubtedly the key-
note of democracy. Its institutions must be
weiglied not for what they are actually achieving
alone, but for what they offer to those whom
they influence. They must carry within them-
selves the seed of their own perpetuation and
perfection. A democratic institution is more
than an organization to meet certain ends, to
solve certain immediate problems ; it is the solu-
tion of tliose problems through the extent of the
future as well. It must have not only efficiency,
but tlie power to grow, and if one element is
to be in c^xcess of the other, the power to grow
is more imperative.

76 THE COMMUNTTY THEATRE

In a certain city there arose not long ago the
need for a revision of the civic affairs. Several
new plans were proposed, of which two seemed
to be more practical than any others ; namely,
that a commission should be chosen to control
the city, or that it should be given into the hands
of an efficiency expert, a business manager.
Both these plans have been adopted by other
cities ; there was nothing in either suggestion
which was revolutionary. And yet that city
disposed of each in turn for equally sound
reasons. They argued that what a city needs,
what a city must have in order to be well gov-
erned, is not a capable business man, nor yet a
board of three capable business men in author-
ity, but good citizens. The city manager may
do well this year and next year, but what if the
citizens, either from lack of interest cr from ac-
tual evil intent, choose for that position a bad
man ? Will the situation not be greatly aggra-
vated ? An absolute — or even a powerful —
authority, if it be wrong, has unlimited force.
And if the citizens are not all keenly alive to
their responsibilities, the power so delegated is
bound to come finally into evil hands. Thus

DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 77

the city decided that a popular representative
form of city government, closely responsible to
the citizens, was what they wanted, and instead
of changing their form of administration, they
set out upon a campaign of stirring the citizens
to interest and action. The results have not
been startling, but the city is growing more
promising every day.

Democracy has always seemed to me like a
giant statue in the sculptor's atelier. We have
the sculptor, his material and his idea, and in
a work of art the three are separate. But in
the democracy they are the same. The idea
exists, clear as long as it can be limited, possible
to perfect in miniature, but having, as a part of
its greatness, vast proportions and an heroic cast.
The perfect State could be made by the assem-
bling of certain limited people together, perhaps
— if they were the right people; and yet, when
the attempt has been made, it has always proved
that the very limitation injured the perfection
of the ideal. The material of which the State
must be formed is the people. They are un-
trained. They need purification. And the
workman, the artist, he is represented by the

78 THE COMIMUNITY THEATRE

people, untrained and groping, gaining a tech-
nique and a surety as he labors, growing as the
work grows in beauty and in power. The very
conception, the very thought of perfection will
be at first as vague and indifferent as the out-
lines of the statue when the artist first takes his
tool in hand, but as the work progresses and the
workman grows, the conception will gain in
beauty.

If we are willing to concede that democracy
seeks to give an equal opportunity for growth
to all of its citizens, it makes the testing of
democratic institutions less complex. The final
analysis must prove whether or not they permit
the greatest freedom of the individual without
limiting the freedom of the whole and the
growth of the institution. The public schools,
which I have mentioned so often, are a case in
point. They offer an education to every child ;
they do not offer a perfect education because we
have not yet discovered a perfect one, but there
are no limits set beyond which an individual may
not go, and the schools carry, in their universal
opportunity, the possibility of attaining unknown
heights. The schools are open to every child.

DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 79

The same intellectual fare is set before all the
children. And no boy or girl is hindered from
becoming the future master of that school, to
carry on its ideals and teaching in a new genera-
tion. This fact, taken in addition to the con-
tinual, eager, and scorching criticism of educators,
is the most encouraging thing about our system
of education. It is alive, it is vital, it is a part
of the life of all the people ; in a word, it is grow-
ing into an expression of an ideal.

Why should we not have a national laboratory
of democracy, where, under conditions as nearly
ideal as possible, experiments in the technique of
democracy might be made ? Indeed there exist
already limited communities where useful tests
might be made, and where,'unless I am mistaken,
unconscious experimentation is carried on. I
mean the universities and especially those of the
West, which are less influenced by the tradition
of learning inherited from Europe than are the
older Eastern ones. In a college we have a com-
munity from which the great chasms have been
removed. The citizenry of this community is
standardized l)y means of physical and mental
examination, and by tlie fact that the struggle

80 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

for existence is removed from within the college
walls. Here is a group of people set above the
currents of thought which influence the world,
similarly endowed in most matters, and yet as
varied as humanity will be wherever it is found.
Surely here new forms of cooperation might be
given trial, and no doubt might be invented.

Student government is the rule rather than the
exception at the present time in colleges. For
the most part, this term applies to a policing of
the college community. Self-restraint is sub-
stituted for rule from above and is much more
successful. Curiously enough, it has also been
found a more stringent regime than the old one.
And certain educators have gone so far as to
express the wish that the student body may
soon be given a voice and a responsibility in the
management of affairs now considered the
metier of the faculty and overseers.

I remember an incident, related I think by
Mr. Lincoln Steffens, in an article I read in my
college days, which indicates the effect of such an
innovation. (I trust I do not distort the ac-
count, which I am unable to verify.) Some
eager American students at an Old World uni-

2 «H

y. ^

DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 81

versity found themselves listening to dry-as-
dust lectures. The professors meandered at
will over unimportant historical facts, instead of
speaking practically and succinctly : men who
had made great contributions to the science
and thought of their subjects never came to
them because of their slovenly methods. The
indignant enthusiasts organized a new set of
classes outside university control. They spoke
harshly to the poor Herr Doktor. They per-
mitted him no fooling and if he chanced to be
late to a lecture they took him to task. The
classes were a success. Who knows what the
casual undergraduate might not accomplish
under the prick of responsibility ?

*'Why," cries a much-loved professor in my
own university, " why do they speak of 'interests
and activities' in contrast with studies which
we all know are neither interesting nor active?
Tell me why ! " It is evident that were " inter-
ests and activities" assigned by the paternal
benevolence of an ancient curriculum, they too
might become sluggish and perfunctory.

Athletics used to unify colleges ; but during
the past decade the forces of the theatre — usu-

82 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

ally called dramatics — have been gaining favor.
The instance of Professor Koch's department
in the University of North Dakota is only one :
varied arc the rumors of remarkable work
which college undergraduates are doing. The
Stadium at Harvard was new when it was used
for the setting of Joan of Arc; the Yale Bowl
was scarcely finished when it was utilized for
Mr. Granville Barker's Greek revival, and for
the dramatic celebration of a university holiday ;
and we have already reviewed at some length
the use to which the College of the City of New
York put its stadium in the production of Cali-
ban. There is indication of the trend in the con-
version of the vast monuments to athletics for
the purposes of drama, but beside this fact
smaller units have also been making an impres-
sion on the world at large. The type of college
dramatic club has changed, and in place of vapid
imitations of what is worst on Broadway, we
have interesting and valuable work set before
us in the Yale Dramatic Club, at Harvard
University and at Dartmouth College.

A canvass of our colleges might prove rich in
discoveries for the benefit of democracy and of

DEINIOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 83

art. There in list exist, unsung without the col-
lege walls, coin[)lete organisms which have
grown up with the college coniniimity and
which have the beauty of a natural growth.
Such is the college theatre which it has been my
privilege to know intimately, and from which,
because of my association with it, I have drawn
much of my data.

All this discussion of college atliletics and
dramatics is not malapropos. If we are to look
to the universities as to the experimenting
ground of democracy, it will be well to consider
in detail the institutions which we find there.
And we shall apply to those institutions the
test which we apply to all the institutions of
democracy : we shall ask whether they fulfill the
great democratic demands. Have they within
themselves the power to perpetuate themselves
and in that perpetuation to become more
perfect ?

CHAPTER VI

A College Theatre

In sketching plans for a community theatre
I have made continual reference to my ex-
perience in the Idler Club of Radcliffe College.
This dramatic club might well be put under
the head "Little Theatre", since it fulfills a
social need. But the community is the limited
community of a college, and therefore the
theatre stands as the result of laboratory
experimentation from which we may draw
conclusions to be applied to new conditions
with care. The unusual degree of excellence,
and the intimate response of processes to the
existing needs are due to the fact that the theatri-
cal organ is not one which was applied to an
already matured group, but that it grew with
the college from small beginnings.

When a group of women came together in
Cambridge to study under the direction of

84

A COLLEGE THEATRE 85

Harvard's professors, they came under much
protest and opposition. Their common en-
tliusiasm so removed tliem from ordinary facts
of hfe that they wanted nothing beyond a con-
secration to learning. But the attitude toward
women in an old university relaxed, and year
by year younger women joined the ranks, until
the social atmosphere became more normal.
The desire for a bond arose, and its earliest
satisfaction was a series of informal meetings
where a few of the number presented pro-
grammes of music, dance, tableaux, or scenes
from Shakespeare. It is interesting to notice
that these women turned naturally to the same
mode of entertainment and expression which
has been customary in every kind of social
group.

The efforts were successful. Gradually these
periodic assemblies for common anmsement
assumed the mon^ formal lines of a club. As
the college gnnv, those ]3hases of the meetings
which w(M'e not directly asso('iat(Hl with the
arts of th(> theatre wore dropped. With in-
creasing fr(>fpi('TK'y, tlie Idler jii'odiiced y)lays.

But all!ion<i'li tlie aii'nnentation of the stu-

8C THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

dent body had crystallized the social unit into
the Idler Club, and had assumed the tradition
that a play occupy the bi-weekly meetings,
there was no revolutionary change in the
membership. Eligibility remained as wide as
the college gates. Any student at RadcliflFe
may be a member of the Idler Club by paying
her tax of one dollar a year; she cannot be
otherwise disqualified. The college enrollment
passed the six hundred mark some time ago,
but the breadth of this policy is unchangingly
successful. And whatever other interests
have been added to the fullness of the under-
graduate life, there is still nothing which at-
tempts to supplant the universal function of
the dramatic club.

Here near at hand, is a miniature community
which has fostered the germ of civic unity, and
produced a theatre expressing the will of the
community itself. If I may be pardoned a
paratlox, here is a theatre truly universal
within its own limits. One may say that what
takes place behind the walls of a woman's
college is not of vital importance ; and it is
true that the achievements of this theatre have

A COLLEGE THEATRE 87

not startled the world. We must always re-
member that this is an experiment in the
laboratory. The fact that an apple fell upon
Sir Isaac Newton's nose — to refer to an old
story — was not important except to Sir Isaac ;
and yet it would not be possible to set down
in this brief space what the world might have
lost had the falling of that apple meant noth-
ing to the scientist beyond the injured mem-
ber. In the case of the Idler Club, I do not
find its productions notable, any more than I
find the undergraduate work in other depart-
ments remarkable. But the form of organi-
zation is imperatively suggestive. In the col-
lege theatre we may watch certain elements
at work, just as in the laboratory we watch
the interaction of chemicals in a glass. And
the results, scientifically applied to life, will
give us a solution of great problems.

In watching the action of the chemicals in
our glass, several points must be kept firmly
in mind. We are looking for the coml^ination
of elements which shall simultaneously satisfy
the social scientist and the artist of the theatre.
The first, it will be remembered, demands an

88 THE COIMMUNITY THEATRE

institution which shall unify the community,
providing that common interest which is to
supplant common ancestry and a common re-
ligious belief. Wliile the artist demands that
the arts of the theatre flourish like the green
bay tree : he clamors for an audience filled
with interest and intelligence, nourishing these
arts as they have never been nourished, warm-
ing them with the sunlight of their favor and
spurring them to growth by the dampening of
their criticism. Can it be possible that the
little crucible of a woman's college can contain
elements so puissant .f^

Writing in 1911, while still an undergraduate,
the present author spoke as follows of the
Idler Club, —

The Club occupies a unique position among
the dramatic clubs of women's colleges. It
binds the college together in a social sense. It
does for Radcliffe what dormitory life, sorori-
ties, nnd athletics do for Smith, Vassar, and
^Yelle.sley. With a carefully conceived and
smoothly rimning machinery which is the de-
velopment of years of slow gro^^i:h, it is possible
to produce nine or ten plays a year for the
members of the club, that is, for college girls
only; and to manage as well the execution of

A COLLEGE THEATRE 89

several large plays to which outsiders are
admitted. This number may seem large, but
it could not be reduced without a definite loss.
If we take away even one meeting, we cut down
the proportion of the college population which
now benefits by the productions. The girl who
can bring tears to your eyes by the pathos or
the fun of her interpretation of character, the
girl whose artistic sense finds expression in a
well-set stage and in a charmingly costumed
picture, or perhaps the shy Freshman who needs
to work hard with other people to forget herself
— one of these will lose much if a, single meeting
is omitted. Statistics of conmiittees show that
in 1910, seventy-eight girls were used in execu-
tive positions beside an equal number in acting.
In this way girls who have administrative
ability are given the same opportunity to con-
tribute that is given to those with dramatic
gifts. Very often the same girl will have experi-
ence in both branches of play-production, and so
learn to bear tenderly with a tired leading lady,
or to have patience with an harassed costumer.

In this summing up of effects the glass takes
on the color desired by the social scientist.
Here is social unity, a bond provided. Here is
mention of the advantage to every sort of citi-
zen, the art citizen, the executive citizen, and
the l)ackward one whose gifts must be found
and trained. Here is a system where every

90 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

member of the population is given one chance
in the course of his Hf etime — one official, active,
dynamic chance — and what more could the
social scientist ask to see in the cloudy glass ?

Resinning, the account turns to the artist
and his interests, in these words :

Then there is the Audience. For every play
that she spends behind the scenes, the average
Radcliffian spends twenty in the seats of the
auditorium. But has she become bored when
her course is over.^^ No, she continues to sit
with unflagging interest. Her attitude has been
a constantly changing one. In her Freshman
year she never doubted that the wine was real ;
there was a lump in her throat at the sobbing of
the heroine. As a Sophomore she took delight
in large criticisms, often wrong, but still based
upon thought : she was learning that art is not
all emotion. By Junior year she had reached
the "upper-class" attitude, and influenced by
her own experience, had found an intelligence in
matters of technique, a keen critical faculty in
the judgment of plays, acting, and details of
stage setting. Four years of Idlers have taught
her something of what is good in acting and
what worth while in drama. If she wishes to
work more deeply upon the theatre and drama,
there are courses offered for her study — plays
by college girls are given a hearty welcome, and
are judged sympathetically as candidates for
production — it is not necessary to mention

A COLLEGE THEATRE 91

that the club gives unusual chances for the
actress to try her powers, and for the artist in
color, light, and line to make experiments.

And now the glass has revealed the aims of
the artist of the theatre, has shown us the
chance for artistic growth, and an audience
taking a constructive part in the work of a
theatre. Does it not seem as if the means
which achieve such results might repay study
sufficiently to discover what fundamental rules
they follow ?

In later chapters I have made use continually
of the organization of the Idler Club, and so I
shall not expound every minute cogwheel
which goes to make the mechanism. It will
be sufficient to observe here the great principles
upon which the theatre has been erected, just
as when we turn to a great world-illustration
of a community theatre we shall see how those
same underlying forces have produced the same
results.

In the first place, the Idler Club belongs to
the college. It is the possession of every mem-
ber of the undergraduate body. The dues are
low, corresponding exactly to a poll tax, cover-

92 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

ing necessary expenses. There are no added
expenses, making unexpected demands. One
dollar a year covers the course of all the small
plays.

The general administration is conducted
upon the lines of popular representation.
Every year at the annual meeting, the Club
chooses its officers — president, vice-president,
secretary, and treasurer. The president and
secretary are from the class which will be
Seniors during their term of office, the vice-
president will be a Junior, and the treasurer a
Sophomore. Just when this tradition grew up
is not certain, but with it came that of progres-
sion in office, which insures ability in the presi-
dent to cope with the intricacies of the highly
organized system of which she is to be head.
The Sophomore who is elected treasurer will,
if she prove satisfactory, pass on to the offices
of vice-president and president in the two en-
suing years, reelected in each case by the vote
of all the Club.

These officers form an Executive Committee
whose duty it is to control the business and
social policy of the Club. They are assisted by

A COLLEGE THEATRE 93

numerous minor committees, such as the Cos-
tume Committee, Lights Committee, Scenery
Committee, Ushers Committee, which are ap-
pointed by the year, and many other temporary
ones. These committees are appointed with
great care, with continual regard for the fact
that the entire population of the college must
be permitted to do its part of the work.

The art administration of the Club, although
in some cases it may prove to be greatly in-
fluenced by an individual president, is not in
the hands of the elected officers, a point which
is worthy of note. The Dramatic Committee,
whose duty it is to choose plays and to produce
them with suitable assistance, is under the
leadership of a chairman, whose authority may
well be said to be the final word in the artistic
locale. The president is a member of the
committee but not the presiding officer.

In the Dramatic Committee every other
quality is sacrificed to artistic eflficiency.
From the Junior class are chosen the two
most obviously gifted members. The first
year of service will be their appreuiieesliip for
the Senior season, when they will control the

94 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

policy of the Club, one of them as chairman.
And every year a third Senior member is
added, who with the president — member ex
officio — completes the board of dramatic
direction.

Thus has this women's club solved the two
primary problems which confront democratic
institutions. It has related itself to the whole
on the one hand, and on the other to efficient
management. Socially, politically, and artis-
tically, the Idler Club fulfills the needs of its
small world. It is financially self-supporting,
and more than that, it makes every year a
present of money to the college. The tug of
forces is the same in this little "body politic"
as in more chaotic natural communities of the
world. But before drawing any parallels, let
us turn our attention to the outstanding ex-
ample of a theatre belonging solely to the com-
munity which has startled and moved the
whole of civilization.

CHAPTER VII

The World's Example of the Community
Theatre

In the mountains of Bavaria, far in spirit
from the sophistication of cities, is a village
which has given the world its greatest dramatic
expression of the Christian religion, and the
strongest evidence of what effect a community
theatre, in its simple, literal sense, would have
upon the community. This is no limited group
of people. This is no brief experiment. Here
is a village like the others in those mountains,
and here, over a period covering not a few
years but twelve generations, has existed a
community theatre in its pure form. The
outcome of this long interaction is evident in
even as superficial a survey as we shall give it
here.

The tradition which has come down to us
from 1()'}3 stales that in that year a pestilence

95

96 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

raged over the country about Oberammergau.
The ghastly contagion reached even to the
viHage, resulting in eighty-four deaths from
among its own ranks. The terrified assembly
which gathered to discuss what must be done
was closed by a vow to God that if He would
save the town from the disease, the released
would act the story of His Passion upon earth,
in solemn joy, every ten years. From that
day the plague ceased in Oberammergau.

Just what part or parts the monks of Ettal
took in the founding of the Passion Play is not
known ; they have had a hand, it is thought,
in the play as it now exists. And the gradual
flowering of the production is lost in the con-
fusion of truth with myth. But by the year
1870 the play was of sufficient import to be
the ground upon which Joseph Maier was
excused from military service when the Prus-
sian War interrupted the performances. Lud-
wig the Second was sufficiently interested to
grant this immunity and to become a patron
of the theatre. When peace came, the Passion
Play was given especially to celebrate the great
joy of the community.

THE ^YORLD"S EXAMPLE 97

The vehicle by which the play is conveyed
to its audience has kept all these years some-
thing of the simplicity of that now legendary
time when it was produced in the church and
the courtyard. A general committee of nine-
teen men control the entire preparations, with
many sub-committees assisting in the manifold
duties necessary to so vast an undertaking.
The general committee makes appointments
and chooses — a solemn matter — the candi-
dates to play each part! The announcement of
their decision is accompanied with much sorrow
and joy, for no person in the village is without
his ambition. Every girl has hoped to play
the Virgin Mary : one at least has postponed
her marriage that she might do so. And when
Anton Lang was told that the Christus hatl
fallen to him, he grew deathly pale before he
silently left the room where he had been sitting
with his father.

Since the world has traced its pathway up
the steep mountain side to the Passion Play,
the duties, expenses, and difficulties have in-
creased. There is a new theatre and more
splendid costumes. But these gorgeous vest-

98 THE COINI^IUNITY THEATRE

ments are still made in Oberammergau, the
actors have not acquired the theatrical device
of wigs, and the scenery is still repainted at
home. An amazing amount of simplicity is
retained. The villagers feel themselves aloof
from the world. The ravages of Mammon have
been withstood. Of all the money which pours
in, none is used for any but the best pur-
poses : two-thirds, after expenses are paid, is
divided among the seven hundred actors, in
proportion to the importance of the class of
each; the last third goes for the good of the
entire town, in 1910, for example, to change the
course of the Ammer, so that its floods might
not threaten the town. It is easy to see that
the pecuniary returns are not the motive power,
when we learn that a man who might have
made a fortune as an actor was paid £70 as the
share of the Christus in the last performance.

The action of the Passion Play has been too
often detailed to require an account. The
world is familiar with all the pageant from
the cannon which calls the audience to Mass in
the early morning to the chant of joy which
rises over the Resurrection and Ascension, at

THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 99

sundown. The procession of the Chorus
through the streets, the eight-hour perform-
ances, the rapt reverence of the audience, and
the joyous inspiration of the performers, are
matters of common comment. Whatever the
play may owe to its predecessor, the Medieval
Mystery, just how many extraneous events
have been lopped off in the course of its his-
tory, it matters only for our discussion that
the play is a series of events in the life of
Christ, opening with the triumphant entry
into Jerusalem, and following the gospel story
closely. Between these acts or scenes are
placed tableaux from the Old Testament, pro-
phetic of the Messiah. And the whole is ac-
companied by a Chorus which sings incidental
music, rarely beautiful, not unlike the Greek
chorus in its function.

All this ritual is like an echo in the hurried
modern world ; some lovely relic of fourteenth-
century Italy, washed high on the mountain
side by the tide of artistic growth, and treasured
there in the isolation of its hiding place. The
church in the village has fostered the forms,
the music, the unsophisticated religious beliefs.

100 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

And the school has fed the draniatic progress :
it has i)rcpared simple peasants to become
artists. Passionately inspired by the legends
and ideals of Christianity, they express them
in work and in living. The delicate wood-
carving which is still their great industry, has
persisted through the invasion of the modern
tourist. How is it to be explained ? Is this
community a phenomenon ? Did nature breed
only artists here ? Or can it be that the pos-
session of a burning ideal, not individual, but
shared by every citizen alike, has transformed
ordinary Bavarian mountaineers ?

The growth, complex and mysterious in its
beauty as a spring violet, has pushed its way
to perfection by processes as natural and uni-
versal as those through which the violet passed,
seeking the sun. Its roots deeply penetrate
the foundation of religion. This is not true
merely because the Passion Play is a religious
story : it has been equally true of every drama
which attained true flowering. Japanese drama
originated in a charm against Earthquake and
his fearful power; the Persians based their
earliest plays upon religious stories ; the Indian

THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 101

drama came into being when personages were
introduced into religious hymns ; and the
Greek — the joy and despair of the world of
the theatre — kept always in the great moments
of the world's highest form of drama, its early
intimate bond with religion.

The seed which was sown in Oberammergau
was the crying need of all the community. A
common fear and its resulting common joy have
bound the village into a unity which resembles
the interdependence of an organism. What-
ever crowds may flock to the theatre on the
celebration of the festival every tenth year,
although they bring wealth to the village,
they are not of as much weight as the little
circle made by the inhabitants of the town.
This is the real audience, which watches the
careful, prayerful preparation of the play from
day to day, whose highest conception of earthly
honor is the assumption of the role of the
Christ, and who, wlx'n asked to take their
play traveling, replic^l that it would be neces-
sary to take as well the whole village, and the
Kofd which guards from y(\ar to year both
village and theatre. Here is perfect unity

102 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

between players and audience — there are no
footlights to be crossed in Oberammergau !
The artists and the Hsteners mingle and are
lost one in the other, in a perfection of
cooperation.

In this way the Passion Play and its attend-
ant secular performances have come to be the
centre of the life in Oberammergau. They
form the stem from which spring all other
activities. Carving, toy-making, and the task
of the herdsman continue; but it is the group
occupation which furnishes the chief interest
of the villagers. The attainment of eminence
in the Passion Play is their highest goal ; the
most rigid punishment for an evildoer is the
expulsion from the common work in it.

FrSulein Mayer — the Mary Magdalen of the
last performance — speaks with Oberammergau's
own voice of what the Passion Play means to
her people. In a recent letter she writes :

I am seriously interested in the idea of hav-
ing the dramatic art introduced into country
communities. It is no doubt a great educa-
tional factor, it binds its members in a closer
union ; it is an ideal to which each and every
one can devote heart and soul. Of course it is

THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 103

the individual that has to act Hke a stimulant
and set ambition, love, and enthusiasm on
fire, for without those three forces, nothing can
be gained. I will not mention the material
side of it, for it takes care of itself.

The Community Theatre in Oberammergau
is the result of centuries. It is an inborn in-
heritance which proves the evolution of a steady
living and growing into their parts. We have
annual plays, given in our Rehearsal Theatre,
where children are allowed to act and to give
self-expression to their interpretation, which of
course makes the child creative. The director,
who is also an Oberammergauer (years ago my
own father supervised the rehearsals and prepa-
rations for the Passion Play) may reject
or sanction one's ideas. They follow certain
tradition. However, one can create one's own
part, whether in the Passion Play, or in the
other Plays.

Since the time of Richard Wagner and Lud-
wig II, King of Bavaria, the drama has
flourished not merely in the city but to a great
extent in the country, where, as is the case
with my own village, we get the benefit out of
the high artistic reproductions of the theatre in
Munich.

Drama and Music go hand in hand, and the
people love to cultivate these Muses.

And Friiulein Mayer is not alone in feeling
that the PasKion Play, the Community Theatre
in Oberammergau, as she calls it, is the cause

lot THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

of the uniqueness, rather than the result of any
unusual gift in the mountain stock. Mr.
William T. Stead wrote with no little emotion,
in the guide book which he made for travelers
to the Passion Play, of the life in the village
when the curious outside world had ebbed back
down the mountain side. His words are a
fitting close to our discussion.

"Their royal robes laid aside," he said,
"they go about their ordinary work in the
ordinary way as ordinary mortals. But what
a revelation it is of latent capacity, musical,
dramatic, and intellectual, in the human race,
that a single mountain village can furnish under
capable guidance, and with adequate inspira-
tion, such a host, competent to set forth such
a play, from its herders, tailors, ploughmen,
bakers, and the like. It is not native capacity
that is lacking to mankind. It is the guiding
brain, the patient love, the careful education,
the stimulus and inspiration of a great idea.
But given these, every village from Dorset to
Caithness might develop artists as noble and
devoted as those of Oberammergau."

CHAPTER VIII

What the Theatre Offers

Institutions of democracy arc distinguished
by the fact that they possess the power to per-
petuate and perfect themselves while they give
the greatest amount of freedom for develop-
ment to the individuals of which ihey are com-
posed. The theatre is preeminent among the
arts in those qualities which fit it for establish-
ment upon a basis of democracy. For, unlike
painting or sculpture, the theatre is a complex
art. It is a composite created by uniting and
harmonizing the labor of all the arts.

No one is excluded from the theatre. Here
is a workshop for every kind of workman.
The impulse of imitation, the instinct of rep-
resentation, upon which Aristotle based his
theories of art in the Poefics, may here find a
place to grow, not only in their greatest but in
their humblest manifestations. It is not easy
105

106 THE COMINIUNITY THEATRE

to confine the desire to create within Hmits.
The expression of the imitative faculty often is
remote from what we are accustomed to think
of as creation. Clearly it is this impulse which
causes the little girl to mark out with stones
the rooms of her "house" under the big tree
in her back yard, before she calls to "Mrs.
Robinson" to come over the fence and pay her
a visit. From similar stirrings rises the fascina-
tion which a little boy in his nursery finds in
building him a cathedral of blocks — ^"but not
quite like the picture, Mother!" Wlien to
announce a royal approach in a school pageant,
a gawky boy is changed for the moment of his
difficult trumpeting into a Herald of the King,
the charm is due to the magic of the impulse
to create. But these cases are obvious.
Clearly such impulses are trained and led
through the art of the theatre. It is of more
obscure instances that it is necessary to speak.
The artist cannot stand alone in the theatre.
He is dependent upon a host of other workers.
It does not take a specially trained or gifted
person to set uj) a proper range in a New
England kitchen, but in that act one worker

WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 107

may find as much satisfaction for his impulse
to create as another would find in the playing
of Hamlet. There are innumerable little tasks
about the production of every play which
must be accomplished and which with proper
care can be made to do the double duty of
serving the theatre and the one who undertakes
them. A doorbell must ring at the right
moment — who will press the button ? Why
not the boy who tinkers with old electric bat-
teries at home and who could never do anything
else in the theatre because he is too shy ? A
pane of glass must crash to the floor outside
the door to make it seem that windows are
being broken — what a chance for the boy
who is destructive and likes to break glass !
Bring him in and make his desire to smash
constructive in spite of him. A mysterious
gray figure must slip across the open doorway
in the twilight : surely this is an excellent op-
portunity for the little trembling grandmother
who has longed for years to act on the stage,
but who is not able to do more, since the
lia}>it of her life prevents her. It is easy to
conjure up the picture she would make,

108 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

wrapped in a long robe, faltering with anxiety
and desire suddenly attainable, flushed with
pardonable pride when the escapade was over !
Moreover, there are frocks to be shortened,
delicate draperies to fashion, letters which
must be written and sealed with a splotch of
sealing wax. The writer remembers still what
energy and care she once put into such a docu-
ment, and the pleasure which filled her when
the chief actor nonchalantly broke it open !

Closely allied to the creative force behind
these details is the energy which we call execu-
tive ability. The power to arrange and to
organize takes the place in certain gifted people
of the desire to make things. It is a necessary
quality, and one which will find outlet through
the community theatre. For the theatre, in
order that it produce the most finished plays
and that it give as much joy as possible to the
community, will require every ounce of organ-
izing power within its scope. The machinery
of the theatrical factory is complicated : it
demands attention in every great and less
degree. The control of the audience is an
important branch : the theatre should know

WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 109

the feelings and hopes of its body. Moreover
the physical facts of production are made easy
by classification and arrangement : costumes,
wigs, and properties should be in careful order
and under the charge of trained workers.
The system of seating must be invented and
managed by a corps of eflBcient ushers. And
with every performance new problems will
arise to tax the ingenuity of the orderly mind.

The community is not to be, in the theatre,
like the same community in its park outside.
The community theatre will gather a collection
of heterogeneous units, but it will mold them
into one whole. The community in the park
has nothing further in common than such
advantages as are offered by a common locality :
in the theatre it is to work together, it is to
play together : to feel as one individual, to
share its laughter and its tears.

The theatre is peculiarly adapted to serve
as a common interest for a diverse community.
It has something of the emotional and under-
lying quality of religion, without the dogmatic
and metaphysical limitations of the Churcli.
It can express the beauty which religion in

no THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

every form is expressing, without exciting the
antagonism which follows the intricate argu-
ment dependent upon creeds. The theatre can
join the Church, and, beyond, can gather to
itself the social, lay endeavors, making them
one. Even the most Quakerish dissenters
from the evils of "play-acting" may be won
over with tact. The experience of playground
directors demonstrates how prejudice may be
circumvented. Many recreation centres have
met with opposition so vigorous that it seemed
a menace to their lives when they suggested the
introduction of folk dancing into the routine.
Yet the evident value of the rhythm and
vitality which are the chief characteristics of
the dances made strategy worth while. There-
fore the youngsters in those protesting vicinities
have been sent home talking of "fancy steps",
and in due time the most violent opposers
have joined in the general applause at the
exhibitions of their skill !

Too much stress cannot be put upon the
value of the community theatre in providing a
common cause for a community. Our com-
mercially organized society has distorted values

WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 111

by a continued emphasis upon the ability to
grasp until we have lost enthusiasm for the
power to give. In the community theatre we
are as individuals less concerned with snatch-
ing away something for selfish ends than we
are with contributing to the store of common
beauty. The qualities which are most in play
will be the altruistic attributes. To refer once
more to Fraulein Mayer's phrasing, the theatre
is, as she says, "an ideal to which each and
every one can devote heart and soul."

The community in the theatre falls into
three distinct groups, or better, into three
aspects, for the group is persistently the whole
community. There is the audience as a whole,
that personalized assembly whose thought the
artist of the theatre strives to vitalize.
Secondly, there is the artist group, the divi-
sion which includes in a sense the least member
of the audience, but which has a kernel in those
gifted ones to whom the artistic control will
be delegated. And lastly there are the
workers whose activities are in every branch
of executive management, and the multitudi-
nous necessary duties of production. In each

112 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

aspect the theatre offers great benefits to the
audience.

As a whole the community audience receives
an intelh'gent relaxation to beguile its leisure
hours. This house of play is the property of the
whole community. It is based upon an intel-
lectual cornerstone, and is constantly changing.
It offers recreation, the relief and revivifying of
faculties fagged with labor : it offers amusement,
and one of its basic principles should be to make
that amusement coincide with the desire of the
audience. For the audience is its cause for
existence and its excuse for continuance.

Entertainment will be its primary aim : to
divert and to serve as a pastime will be its
first duty. But because the audience is to be
an active and not an inert recipient of this
entertainment, and because every kind of in-
fluence will be given a chance to exert itself,
the quality of the theatre's products is bound
to improve. It may do so very slowly ; but
it is a curious fact that human beings, by doing
one thing well, learn to appreciate the intrinsic
value of another thing well done, and growth is
inevitable.

WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 113

After it is amused, then, the audience may
find an intellectual stimulus in its theatre.
The leisure of such a community becomes, in
Mr. MacKaye's vivid phrase, "a constructive
leisure." The art of the theatre is, like all
arts, based upon the emotions of the human
race, and is expressed through the limitations
of the human intellect. The most primitive
member of the community is moved by the ap-
peal to his emotions, but step by step the
superimposing of an intellectual appeal has its
effect until the form and the expression also
have weight. This feeling for form is the
beginning of the education of the audience.
The theatre now becomes an intellectual as
well as a sensuous pleasure; it satisfies the
cravings of the mind as well as the desire for
rest and relaxation. And with the birth of an
intellectual interest comes also a broadening
and a stinudation of taste.

But all these things are slow processes.
The audience learns through its participation
in the work of the theatre, through the con-
stantly changing demands of the theatre, the
work on conmiittees and the art interpretation.

114 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

The association with great works of art is in
itself a stimulation, but such works of art can-
not be used to the exclusion of less admirable
ones for reasons of policy and practical common
sense.

To those members of the community whose
life is to be spent in the world of art the theatre
opens its arms. In organization, in execution,
in the details of financial management, even
in the humanitarian sciences, the theatre offers
opportunities; but these are not gifts which
can be found in no other place. Public offices
unconnected with art are rich in them. But
the artist is handicapped : our present society
offers him no studio under the cold north light
of which he may test his visions and discard
them for fresh ones. The theatre gives him
that studio. It is — odious as the word often
seems — a school for artists.

No artist is forgotten : the work of each is
equally welcome. The musician as well as the
actor; the playwright, poet, and composer
alike; the dancer and the mimic; the archi-
tect and the sculptor, the painter with his
palette on his arm — each and every one has

WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 115

his niche. They are marshalled in comrade-
ship : they lean one upon the other : now one
shall claim the chief importance, the stage's
centre, and now another. The arts in the
theatre shall rediscover the old interdependence.

It may well be said that already interaction
and interdependence have been established in
the commercial theatre. That is true, but true
only in a limited sense, for the restraint exer-
cised by the precariousness of the theatrical
profession disturbs the perfect balance. The
mingling of the arts is vital, but not so vital
as the existence of a true public, a living, breath-
ing audience.

This new audience is not to be a precious
body. It is not a set of dilettante sensation
seekers. It has normal reactions and a keen
interest which is practical and immediate.
Here is some one to listen to what the artist
has to say — not to listen curiously as to some
oddity in a nmseum, but to give him quiet at-
tention. The artist will not complain because
flaws are found in his work : he will take the
condemnation of his color-values, the discovery
of limping lines in his blank verse, and the

116 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

shocked faces at his disharmonies, with glow-
ing pride because he has the real eye, ear, and
mind, of real people. Then the makers of
beauty may flourish among us as natural
creatures instead of anomalies, and art come
into its own.

After all, the sum of what the theatre offers
to the artist lies rather in the reinstatement of
art than in his personal acquisition. By the
establishment of the theatre in the community
as common property, by assembling the forces
of the people for general good, the arts which
are the fruits of the endeavor become objects
of civic admiration. We are a puritanical
country. How often do we stumble on proofs
of it ! We are shy of what appeals strongly to
our senses. We feel an uneasiness in the
presence of art : we distrust it as a life force.
But in the community theatre there is a chance
for art to bloom under the eye of the whole
people, to answer the crying need. In the
community theatre a universal recognition of
art becomes not only possible but inevitable.
This is the great gift of the community theatre
to the artist — and to all the people.

CHAPTER IX

How Shall We Organize?

To all who wish to organize a theatre in
their community it is necessary to say only,
"Begin." Begin now. If three people and
no more are ready, let two of them act for the
joy of the third ! Do not wait for a theatre, but
make a barn the playhouse, and give an out-of-
door play in the summer sunshine of late June.
Turn the porch into a stage, or let a parlor serve
the purpose to an auditorium adjoining from
which the dining table has been temporarily
removed. The Passion Play of Oljerammergau
was first given in the church of the village, and
the Abbey Theatre was made from a morgue !

If there be a village green, why not begin with
a pageant there ? It will help advertise. Let
half-hearted believers be shown the flash of
color and th(? stately movement as the town's
most distinguished ancestor enacts for them
117

118 THE COIVIMUNITY THEATRE

his most historic deeds : few will remain half-
hearted after they have watched the stirring
spectacle. First of all, let there be a living
spirit. If that spirit exists, if the desire be
alive — no matter how insignificant the spark
— tasks Herculean in size may be brought to
completion.

Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has long been an
advocate of the theatre as an established State
institution. No other person has tried so hard
to found a National Theatre in England. But
of all that he has said and written, a statement
made before the Harvard Dramatic Club, some
five years ago, has impressed itself most vividly
upon my memory. "The theatre needs," said
Mr. Jones, "not great monuments like the New
Theatre in New York City, but teachers,
enthusiasts. Saint Pauls of the Drama.'' Such
apostles of the theatre may work wherever
they may be : certainly the Christian religion
did not demand a cathedral for its early prac-
tice !

It is equally unnecessary to wait for money.
Do not worry about luxuries ; begin without a
penny. The original endowment of the Abbey

HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 119

Theatre was notoriously ten guineas. Poverty,
when it does not entail hunger, serves as an
invigoration. The theatre without money will
be limited, but not in its capacity for growth.
Every device of ingenuity which the moneyless
theatre employs will increase the wealth of that
theatre a thousandfold. The theatrical pro-
fession has been taught a great lesson about
expenditure. New York productions — and
many others as well — were challenged by the
artistic excellence of the Portmanteau Theatre
under Mr. Stuart Walker's direction. Yet in
his introduction to "Portmanteau Plays",
Mr. Edward Bierstadt asserts that money was
a force almost negligible in the Portmanteau
campaign. Mr. Walker found no lack of
enthusiasm for a play, the cost of which was
actually not one cent : on the contrary, its
success equalled his most expensive produc-
tion, the play upon which he lavished fifteen
hundred dollars. However, to the Broadway
producer it does not seem more astounding
that a play which cost nothing should succeed
than that any play could be staged with an
expenditure of only fifteen hundred dollars !

no THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

For upon Broadway men think in thousands
of dollars : it is inconceivable that the theatre
should be established (as Mr. Walker's was)
with only three thousand dollars capital and
the vital energy of young enthusiasm.

The spirit which is not thinking of money is
clearly shown in Oberammergau. Fraulein
Mayer writes simply, "I will not mention the
material side of it for it takes care of itself."
She speaks a great truth : the community
theatre which will be the greatest success is
not the one which begins with the largest pres-
ent of money, but the one where the spirit of
cooperation and fellowship is thriving most
vigorously.

Begin at once with the two or three members
whose faith is strong. But begin upon a
strong foundation of fellowship. Let no limits
be set upon the membership : make the theatre
as wide as the community. Do not allow what
seems like the promise of an immediate growth
to limit and narrow the most valuable asset a
theatre can have. In a village every member
— every inhabitant — should be included :
neither youth nor age should be cause for ex-

HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 121

eluding an interested candidate. The doors
of the theatre should always swing wide open
to the magic of the word "willing." At first
it will be possible to include only those who
come of their own desire ; when the theatre
has been firmly established, when it actually
belongs to all the community, the recalcitrants
will be dragged in by the tug of public opinion.
But in the beginning it will be well to let the
members feel that he who comes must bring
a gift, that any gift, however small, is wel-
comed, and that every member of the theatre
groups will share equally in all the privileges
of the theatre.

Membership in the community theatre
should never be limited except by the limits of
the community. Individual cases will expound
peculiar problems. The age limit is one which
is common to all theatres, and which w^ill be
variously solved. To exclude children and
growing boys and girls seems not only unkind
to them, but also unwise from every angle from
which it can be considered. It would naturally
deprive the theatre of valuable material. At
the same time it would also take away some-

12e THE COMIVIUNITY THEATRE

thing which the cliildren could get in no other
way — the joy of guided self-expression, the
possibility of cooperative work, and an interest
at once intellectual and amusing.

However, in every theatre it may not be
possible to include all children, and in that case,
a children's supplementary organization, which
could be formed, would serve as a feeder for
the grown-up theatre. A play given by both
these once a year will offer an interesting ex-
change of ideas.

Membership, then, is not to be limited except
by residence in the actual group. Villages
which have to meet the question of summer
colonists will certainly not exclude them, but
will take care not to let a part assume the re-
sponsibilities and the benefits of the whole.
Summer visitors will prove helpful : there no
doubt will be gifted and able individuals
among them ; but they must not carry off all
the honors. The theatre must let the "summer
people" speak, but must not aim to lisp only
in their words.

Closely associated with membership is the
question of dues — of the taxation upon which

HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 123

the first financial endowment of the theatre
is to depend. This should be small, indeed
purely nominal, as the poll tax is nominal
— something which every one must and can
pay. There should be nothing resembling the
old initiation fee of a dramatic club. The sum,
of course, must be set to accord with the needs
and financial vision of the people : a dollar
is by no means a fixed sum ; there are places
which regard it as negligible and others where
its value is tremendous. In country towns
where barter still persists the fact that the
theatrical tax was one dollar a year might
keep many members from "joining."

Montclair, New Jersey, has established
during the past year a theatre whose ideals of
membership and whose general policy are in
accordance with the strictest community
theatre demands. In Montclair every one is
welcomed into the theatre : during the few
months of its existence, the number of members
has passed two hundred and fifty, if not at this
time three hundred. The dues are fifty cents
a year — moderate certainly, for a township
which is usually considered a rich one. This

124 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

membership, however, does not admit to all
performances of the theatre, to which tickets
arc sold at a basic price of twenty-five cents
each ; but does give one the entree to a special
performance at the end of the season, to which
no seats are sold.

This plan seems not so wise as the one of
having a larger tax, and giving more definite
meaning to its payment. Why not charge a
dollar and exclude from acting and from the
usual programme of plays all people who are
not members ? Let the membership committee
be composed of tactful and thoughtful people :
should any candidate appear whose inability
to pay a dollar was evident, let proper means
for the earning of that dollar be provided. If
necessary, have the payment of the dollar in
two parts ; but let the dues cover the expenses
of the year's list of plays. And, instead of one
play to which only members and their invited
guests may come, why not have one or two
plays, widely advertised and produced with
great care, to which the world is bidden ? They
will increase membership and the money in
the treasury.

HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 125

It may be said that the first pkm, the pay-
ment of a small tax and of letting non-members
as well as members see all the plays and act
whatever parts they can, is broader and more
truly democratic. On the contrary, it seems
to me that it is necessary everywhere in life to
lay equal emphasis upon privilege and re-
sponsibility. The theatre needs the dignity of
a social recognition as much as it needs the
money which increased membership will bring:
the membership should therefore have a defi-
nite meaning and should be defined by a
clearly drawn line. Those outside that line
should not share the advantages of those
inside, but no one should be kept outside
arbitrarily.

However small the actual number of
members which forms the nucleus of the
community theatre, it will be well from the
first to make it assume the outlines of a demo-
cratic government. It may be that some more
fortunate form of government, lacking the
defects which are so clearly recognizable in
the practice of democracy, the faults of wire-
pulling and politics and inefficiency, some form

126 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

of government with less discrepancy between
the ideal and the exercise of the function, may
be discovered by our children's children. In the
meantime, however, we are accustomed to the
device of popular representation : it is a con-
trivance which seems natural. From the be-
ginning, it will be well to let every member of
the audience feel his own authority by sub-
mitting the choice of the executive staff to a
popular vote.

Such a course meets at once two major
objections : officers chosen by vote are not
necessarily the most efficient candidates, and
the audience-body is not necessarily the best
judge of things artistic; it will be more likely
to elect its officers upon a basis of political popu-
larity. These two fundamental difficulties
must be dealt with by a limitation of the power
of each office rather than by any restriction of
the power of choice conferred upon the audience.
The direction of the art policy will have to be
organized carefully, guarding against placing
too much power in the hands of an officer
liable to be influenced by politics : the whole
must be delicately adjusted to suit the needs of

HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 127

the audience as well as those of the most favor-
able art conditions.

The president, vice-president, secretary, and
treasurer, may be elected by the audience.
The pull of politics will no doubt be evident
at once : parties will form, perhaps, one leaning
towards a definite art policy, and one strongly
in favor of popular control at the expense of
artistic achievement. But these two parties
are best calculated to make the theatre an
answer to the dreams of both its founders.
Neither the aims of the artist of the theatre,
nor those of the social scientist will be wholly
neglected through an over-attention to the
claims of the other; a proper balance will be
maintained, not the result of inertia, but the
vital balance which comes from the opposition
of strong forces.

To add to the efficiency of the executive
corps some form of progression in office may be
adapted to each community. In a town made
up of every kind of person, the simple method
which the Idler Club has developed at Rad-
cliffe College would prove too obvious. Be-
sides, it might be difficult to find a person

128 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

who could sacrifice so much time to the theatre
for three or four consecutive years. If, how-
ever, the officers be elected from those who have
served upon one of the numerous committees
of management (which will be treated in detail
at a later point), and if the chief executive
must be elected from the officers of the pre-
vious year, it will accomplish much the same
results. No executive officer will come to his
post without training of some sort in the
practical work "behind the scenes"; and the
presiding officer, during two years of service,
will have learned the details of his machinery,
its powers and its limitations.

The president's chief qualification should
be rather for execution of practical detail
than for art creation in the theatre. The
director of the art policy should not be a person
who is chosen by the vote of the audience :
his characteristics are rarely those which would
make him sufficiently popular to win him an
election. The art direction should be removed
as far as possible from the effects of politics :
the management should lie in the hands of an
appointed officer. His appointment must not

HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 129

rest in the hands of one person, but shoukl be
subject to the approval of several : the presi-
dent who is entering office, taking counsel with
the retiring president and with the art director
of the previous year, and limited somewhat in
his action by their opinions, might control
the decision. The committee which with the
director is to execute the art policy will in turn
be chosen by the new director and the new
president, still advised by the experienced
officers of the former year.

The matter of the term of service for a
director is another point v/hich must be
dififerently decided in different localities. No
doubt at first there may be one person who
stands out as preeminently the director. It
would be unwise to put into the office people
utterly unfit for its duties simply because of a
rule that the director must change every twelve
months. Indeed, I am inclined to the belief
that a longer term of office will prove more
satisfactory. On the other hand, there is
danger in one person's too steady control of
the art policy : terms of office should not be
unlimited. And from the committee under the

130 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

director there will come candidates filled with
promise and fresh ideas.

These chief officers then, the president, the
vice-president, the secretary, and the treas-
urer, form the Executive Committee. They will
control broadly the plans of the theatre and
its general management. In their turn they
will be assisted and supported by a large number
of minor committees, appointed and reinforced
every year, which carry on the difficult special
services of the ordinary running of a theatre.
The art director with his committee will pro-
duce, stage, and coach the actors of every
production. He will, moreover, read the plays,
with the assistance of the Play-reading Com-
mittee y and choose his programme. For his
assistance there will be maintained a Com-
mittee on Costumes, a Committee on Settings,
a Committee on Lighting, a Committee on Wigs
and Hairdressing, and a Committee on Prop-
erties. These specialized groups will be able
to tell him exactly what exists in the stock of
the theatre, and will arrange that he gets what-
ever he needs. Their duties and their train-
ing will be examined in the next chapter.

HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 131

Thus, with a careful protection of the art
direction, and the hmitation of the powers of
the executives who depend directly upon
popular election for their offices, it will be
possible to establish a system of checks and
counter forces upon the whimsical will of a
democratic control. And although when the
organization is founded with a small circle
only — the two or three members mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter — it will not
be possible to follow so elaborate an arrange-
ment, the details may well be kept in mind,
for the growth will be rapid, and the need for a
fair assignment of duties will promptly be
forced upon the organizers.

CHAPTER X

What Can Be Done with Little

Technology of production in the theatre is
not the concern of these chapters. It belongs
rather to each individual who will find himself
in control of the artistic problems. But there
are certain experiences which taken in conjunc-
tion are an argument against those members of
the theatrical profession who feci the need for
great sums of money in the launching of any
theatrical enterprise. It is possible to create
fine stage effects with only the smallest re-
sources.

A number of books upon the new theories
of stage decoration are named in the Appendix.
They dwell upon the importance of eliminating
details and speak at length upon abstract
questions : they are valuable to the student
and to the would-be producer. Design, color,
light and shade, contrast, spirit, and mood of
132

THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 133

the play and of the scene, are details that
demand an ultimate attention ; but it is much
more likely that the first question the director
will have to meet will have a more pressing
form. He will not be asked for a solution to
any problem in theoretic design : he will be
importuned to make a garden which shall
satisfy every one. And can a garden be made
without money ?

There is little an artist cannot do when
cornered. I remember, in the whitewashed
basement room which served for an atelier for
the scene painter of the 47 Workshop at Har-
vard, watching the final strokes put on a
fountain. Two paint-daubed workmen hung
over it. They gloated over the tiny thread
which silvered into the basin. Even in the
harshness of the daylight the painted wood
and canvas looked like a relic of Medieval
Italy. Under lights it took on a far-away
reality : the silver ribbon purred caressingly
against the distorted gray-green mouth. Yet
to the artist and his turpentine scented assist-
ant tlio chief factor of the triumph lay in the
origin of the grinning face and the hollow bowl.

134 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

The humble beginnings of that Italian foun-
tain were a child's Santa Claus "false face", a
wooden chopping bowl — deftly sawed into
shape — and a bit of tarnished silver braid.

The statement that economy and great art
are inseparable has become platitudinous.
The worker in the arts should not feel stinted,
but he should be convinced that he must avoid
effort — effort in his materials, effort in his
thought, and effort in his methods. There
must be exertion and struggle, but the result
of the labor should be so simple and so natural
that it seems wholly effortless. Again and
again there are two possible ways of expressing
an idea — the simple way and the complex or
sophisticated one. It has been a fault of our
theatre that it too often takes the complicated
rather than the straightforward way.

Elsewhere I have spoken of Mr. Stuart
Walker's Portmanteau Theatre. The require-
ments of Mr. Walker's stage are such that he
has been forced to employ the most simple
means, even had he not been drawn to simple
things by his tastes. The photograph of The
Seven Gifts, the Pantomime which the Port-

THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 135

manteau Players gave in Madison Square,
shows how simple a picture may be without
losing anything of loveliness. The unaffeeted-
ness of the design, the repose of the figures,
and the elimination of every unnecessary
detail, are characteristic of Mr. Walker's work.
He drops his deep blue curtains, moves a table
anti two whimsical chairs to his forestage, and,
behold, we are in "a room just up-stairs." Or,
with a soap box and a generous supply of
imagination, he turns that same forestage for
us into the bank of a river.

The primary (or I might have said, kinder-
garten) productions which I have mentioned
may teach much to the beginner in the theatre.
(To follow Mr. Walker's more venturesome
flights would require his trained corps of
artists.) There are many plays which can be
staged amusingly without expenditure of
money, if only thought and skill are available.

One small stage with which I have been long
familiar was built by an architect whose ideals
aimed at stability rather than pliability. The
walls are inexorably plastered and painted.
Out-of-door scenes are often the despair of the

136 THE COMiSIUNITY THEATRE

producer ; but, making a virtue of its weakness,
he continually used the stage as an interior
with telling effect. Panels of wall paper ap-
plied with thumb tacks changed the room from
a New England colonial parlor to a Louis XVI
boudoir, at a cost which was utterly negligible.
Or again, with a hanging of inexpensive chintz,
it became a modern English drawing-room.
And the wall paper as well as the chintz could
be rolled up and packed away in a small space
when not in use.

The use of screens and of hangings has totally
altered our ideas of stage illusion. It is not
necessary that every least can of sardines be
in place, in staging a scene in a grocery store.
The shop may be as living and as spiritually
true when it is made of a deal table, a row of
wooden boxes which have cranberries and
carrots peeping out, and a tall bucket or so
in the background. A beautifully embroidered
scarf hanging on a dark screen may change a
bleak hall into a regal throne-room, and long
soft curtains may be turned into a forest, a
peasant's hut, or a lady's chamber by the use
of a single property in each separate scene : by

THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 137

the adroit placing of shadows to simulate the
woods, by the rough hewn bench of the peas-
ant, and by the delicate prie-dieu with a
scarlet cushion upon which the lady kneels.

The same property may be used again and
again. In the property room of the Idler Club
is a silvery whistle which was originally ac-
quired to indicate the passing of the midnight
flier. It tooted much like a locomotive and
sent little chills down the backs of the listeners.
But since that day the gleam of that whistle
has served many a purpose. Once it was the
flashing revolver which kept the villain at
bay until the hero arrived to clasp the fainting
heroine : again it was valuable family silver,
looted by burglars from the safe : it whistled
outside for everything from a tugboat to a
policeman : it was a toy in the nursery and
part of a soldier's equipment. The cost of
the whistle was twenty-five cents, eight years
ago : it is as fresh and energetic, as shrill
and ear splitting to-day as it was the day it
was triumphantly unwrapped for the admiring
ears of the greenroom assem})led !

TJic Chinese Lantern bv Lawrence Housman

138 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

suggests endless trains of thought in the psy-
chology of stage illusion. In China the
heaviest carved furniture is in use. The
houses are not, like those in Japan, built of
paper. People do not sit on the floor. And
yet Mr. Housman has given directions for all
these things, and when under the inspired
direction of Mr. Sam Hume, the play was
produced in Cambridge, friends of the author,
who had lived for twenty years in China, could
not say too emphatically that it was exquisitely
Chinese. The color and the light which played
against the soft-tinted, glazed background
followed the emotion of the play step by step,
and wove into its texture a faint Orientalism,
as delicate and fanciful as a dream. Only the
slightest suggestion of the charm of the staging
can be found in the photograph of the set, by
Mr. Hume and Mr. Gardner Hale, which is
shown on the opposite page.

Every one has been astonished at some time
by the marvel of a simple charade, by the in-
finite variety of a table cover, and the charm of
a garment worn upside down. One member
of a family assumes a strange wild aspect when

y. ^

THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 139

he is dressed in the garments of another : a
collar and black coat put on backwards quickly
change the enfant terrible into churchly solem-
nity. There is little difference in producing a
vast spectacle : the proportions are larger, but
the elements remain the same.

Costuming a play is a much simpler matter
than many people suppose. It is not necessary
to consult a costumer, to hire elaborate hideous-
ness ; it is not even necessary to buy expensive
materials. From attics and old trunks the
most amazing treasures may be dragged to
light. Old evening frocks can be altered in the
twinkling of an eye by a free use of safety pins
to almost any picturesque period. A beaver
hat is sure to lurk in an unexpected corner.
An ancient military cloak will shake out the
scent of old romance from its folds along with
the flutter of dust and moths. The pretty
paraphernalia of our grandmothers, the fans,
the high-heeled slippers, the quaint coquettish
sunshades, need not remain in seclusion. They
should take their proper places.

When the first Peterborough Pageant was
produced in memory of Mr. Edward Mac-

140 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

Do well, Professor George P. Baker and the
Committee were at a loss where to find hoops
and the calico prints which were needed to make
the Civil War scene — to be played in the plain
light of day — untheatric and real. Professor
Baker delights in relating how he found
everything, even the hoops, packed away in
the dingy recesses of the village shop : and he
adds, with a twinkle of humor, that the store-
keeper was finally prevailed upon to sell them
at less than the wartime prices !

The most impressive Morocco who ever sued
for Portia's hand wore a costume which could
be duplicated by the skilful draping of a linen
sheet, and the apt twist of a Turkish bath towel.
It was straight and long and princely : its
whiteness threw into fatal relief the mahogany
of the Oriental skin. The audience felt with
the lady the little shudder of racial mistrust
even while it drew a quicker breath at the
startling beauty of the suitor.

Many years ago I was present at the pro-
duction of a nursery play which well might
liave been called " The E.rploifs of an Apron."
There were other actors, but through five

THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 141

acts the apron — the full white apron such as
nurses wear over comfortable laps — made its
entrances and exits. There was no act in
which it did not vary its performance : there
was no single scene in which it did not appear.
In the first act it was a plain apron, spreading
its whiteness over the knees of the nurse of the
heroine; no sooner was the curtain up on act
two than the apron was discovered suspended
round the neck of the hero — a simple valiant
butcher boy ; the third act, by skilful manip-
ulation, used it for a court train at a ball ;
in the fourth it was draped about a large doll
who interpreted the part of a foundling, and
in the last it framed the heroine's sad face, as
she droopingly sought the haven of a convent,
serving as wimple and as coif at once. And,
like many stories of childhood and of children,
the memory of that apron seems to me less
an anecdote than a parable. It carries much
instruction for the costumer.

Elaboration of detail and the expenditure of
large sums of money are not indispensable.
Out-of-door plays may be staged simply and
without much money. It is not necessary to

142 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

have an expensive stage. It may be that the
Town Hall was built upon Doric lines, or that
some generous inhabitant of your village has a
lovely sloping orchard — they will serve the
purpose of a setting for beauty. Use what is
at hand thoughtfully and with taste : the
result will be satisfying.

It cannot be reiterated too often, "Make use
of what you have." Look upon everything as
possible theatrical material. There will appear
many strange new lights upon old objects.
This advice is valuable not only in the pro-
cesses of production, but as well in the choice
of a theatre, in the selection of casts, and in
the everyday social routine of the theatre. A
brief review of the theatres in the Appendix
will show the variety of the houses of play
which already exist : schoolhouses, stables,
the floor of a loft-building, and even a converted
barroom are among them. Of the last charm-
ing interior a photograph is included, which is,
I think, suggestive of much that might be
done, with its use of old church pews, and
patchwork curtain.

Do not overlook the usefulness of the thing

THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 143

that is near you. Keep your productions sane
and reasonable. Let them be proportionate to
the surroundings. Do not try to follow in
detail a production of Henry the Eighth by Sir
Herbert Tree if your stage is set up shakily
against the rough timbers of a barn : think
rather of strolling players and the simplicity
of the Elizabethan theatre. Remember that
a production is as much an entity as a sym-
phonj'^ is : carefully eliminate contrasts which
will bring in discords where there should be
harmonies.

But above all it will be the spirit of joy —
the joy of creation — and the inspiration of
working together which will contribute most
to the beauty of the theatre. Do not let that
precious attribute escape : it is priceless above
emeralds. With joy and with cooperation, it
is possible to pass to the uttermost bounds of
achievement, and the possession of money
matters very little.

CHAPTER XI

Suggestions

To harmonize and to create a balance between
the social and the artistic forces in the theatre
requires the most delicate manipulation.
Labor — the privilege of service — must be
so divided that no one is excluded from his
just proportion. It may be well to consider
in turn the duties of each oflSce in relation to
the other cogs in the wheel of production, and
in relation to the audience-community.

The Executive Committee is to control the
general management. It is composed of the
president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer,
and chairman of the Membership Committee.
In the earlier days of the theatre, there will be
more work for the committee as a whole than
when the routine is established, for it must
assemble to meet crises, sudden demands of
this or that party, to discuss the trials of each
144

SUGGESTIONS 145

individual officer, and to knit the tangled
threads into a smooth and pleasant fabric.
At all times its function will be to untie knots
of executive policy.

The president is, of course, the chief execu-
tive and the presiding officer, and as such must
possess qualities of worth in management and
in meeting people, tact and quick-wittedness,
directness of thought, and speed in action.
The president should not be an artist of the
theatre, primarily ; nor is it, on the other
hand, necessary that this officer be a person
trained in one of the social sciences, but rather
a person of average administrative ability
who has been trained carefully in the minor
matters, and whose social gift is somewhat
unusual. The president should be a person
who has no difficulty in obtaining the vote of
something over the majority — a good popular
candidate. The social gift and the background
of training which make the officer familiar
with the means of production at his command
are the most salient characteristics which he
need possess.

Unlike most vice-presidents, the vice-presi-

146 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

dent of our theatre is to be a busy and important
person. He works behind the seenes however.
Let him be chairman of the greenroom com-
mittees. This is in reality the position of
Chairman of Chairmen, for under him will
stand in turn the heads of each individual unit
into which the process of production is divided.
The vice-president will know what money can
be spent in the course of the season upon all
the branches of the greenroom work, he will
decide how these sums are to be allotted, after
consultation with the under-chairmen. He is
the representative of the greenroom in the
Executive Committee.

The secretary has obvious duties, as has,
indeed, the treasurer. In large communities
they may be given assistants : in small ones the
duties of both may be consigned to one person,
or combined with those of the chairman of
the Membership Committee. This last-named
official is of vital importance to the newly-
established theatre, and should be a perfect
fusion of tact, advertising ability, enthusiasm,
and intuition! He is the sociological head of
the theatre, and in his hands should be placed

SUGGESTIONS 147

the authority to do all that is possible to en-
courage the growth of the membership list
until its compass is the breadth of the com-
munity. After that, with the help of an eflEi-
cient committee, he should keep closely in
harmony with all the members, acting as a
thermometer and a barometer for the Executive
Committee, and the producing staff.

Of the appointed officers, the director is
most important. In many cases, some one
person with appropriate qualifications will
stand in evident contrast to the rest of the
community. However, when this is not true,
the appointee should be skilled in handling
material, both theatric and human, and should
have a definite knowledge of the tastes and
interests of his audience. He should be sup-
ported by a committee of interested people,
with a decided gift for the details of actual
stage work. In the hands of the director's
committee will rest the production of plays and
the problems of casting, the "coaching" of
the actors, and the general artistic oversight
of the season.

The minor committees are assembled in

148 THE COMINtUNrrY THEATRE

ranks luuler these staff officers. The Com-
mittee on Costumes will organize and arrange
costumes, keeping those which are made in a
suitable order and providing costumes for each
play as it comes up for consideration. The
Committee on Make-np will assume the re-
sponsibility for the wigs and the beards, will
apply rouge and powder, will become proficient
in the difficult manipulation of cosmetic.
Scenery, lights, and properties — each needs
an able corps for its direction.

The committees are appointed for the
season; they work together through a series
of plays. But at the same time there are
temporary committees which cooperate with
them, each serving for one production. If
there are to be six plays during the season, there
are six committees, each turning its attention
to one play. A chairman, with two or three
assistants, will be sufficient. These temporary
executives work in direct connection with the
member of the director's committee who is
staging the play ; they call upon the permanent
committees for assistance and for advice.

When the temporary chairmen are chosen

SUGGESTIONS 149

by the Executive Committee, the most careful
attention shoukl be paid to the advice of the
chairman of Membership. It will be well in
choosing them to take prominent persons from
every faction of the community life and to
select them with attention to many matters
beside a gift for the theatre. This serves an
obvious social purpose, the programme will in-
terest one and then another subdivision of the
audience as a whole — the season w^ill belong
to the entire community.

The choice of plays demands the careful
attention not only of a Play-Reading Com-
mittee, but of every one connected with the
enterprise. Some one has wisely said that
Broadway needs play readers no longer be-
cause even the office boys are reading plays.
In the community theatre it will be regrettable
if half the audience is not discovering plays for
production. WHiile the theatre is a small
group, this assistance will be all that the
director and his committ(^e require, but when
the intricacies of stage direction are multiplied
by the augmentation of the theatre's size, the
buffer value of the Play-Reading Committee

150 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

becomes instantly apparent. By the time the
membership has reached, say three hundred,
there will be need of a committee, constantly
reading, wandering up and down the world
in search of new material. They serve as the
beaters in an Indian hunt, to rouse the quarry.
It is the duty of the director and his com-
mittee to act the part of the sportsman whose
shot commits them to production.

In the Appendix is a list containing several
books which will be of help in planning balanced
programmes, or which will offer fields of forage
for those who are unaccustomed to play reading.
More than that, the Drama League has much
to say about courses in reading and the study
of the drama. These matters will fall naturally
under the direction of the Play C&mmittee:
courses in the history and technique of the
drama will stimulate an interest in the literary
value of the theatre. Such a branch of the
theatre's work might well be intrusted to the
Play-Reading Committee.

The difficult task of assigning parts — the
casting of plays — falls, in the last analysis,
to the director. He is of course open to sugges-

SUGGESTIONS 151

tion. And in several well conducted theatres
it has been found that a system of trials is
more productive of good actors than any other
method of filling the parts. At Montclair,
where the democratic note is vibrant, the
candidates are tried more or less publicly. Mr.
Harold Howland writes :

One of the trial evenings of the Players is
an attractive occasion. Twenty-five or thirty
persons sit round informally — the Producing
Committee, the producer of the Play, candi-
dates, members of the General Committee. A
makeshift scene is sketched in with random
tables and chairs and what not. Two or three
at a time the aspiring players read short scenes
from the play as directed by the producers.
Sometimes the logical players for certain
parts are apparent without extended hearing.
Sometimes the casting of a single part requires
many trials and even the combing of the
community for the right material. But the
democratic free-for-all method seems to work.
Splendid material appears from unexpected
and unknown quarters. . . .

The method of trying candidates for each
play, although undoubtedly superior to that of
casting by guess or by fancy, has several draw-
backs. It concentrates competition : tliere is

152 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

the danger of hard feehng between the winner
and the loser. It takes much time : the
committees must try all comers, and some of
them will be those who have "tried" for every
part in the history of the theatre. More-
over, very talented persons must be dragged
out to go through the routine with every one.
It was to offset such economic waste and
such friction that during my own direction
of an unimportant organization, I instituted
annual trials. A certain time was set aside
for all people who wished to act to appear
before the judges : scenes from standard plays
which had variety and range were designated :
the judges were given pencils and slips of paper.
Then in careful order, sets of two or three would-
be actors came and played their scenes. The
most assiduous notes were made upon each
performance : the judges consulted together,
and a list was made in which the limitations
and possibilities of each performer were set
forth for future use. This list was to provide
the casts for the season's productions.

The concentration of examining the actors
eliminates the need for repeated trials whenever

SUGGESTIONS 153

a new cast is necessary during the busy season ;
but it will be well to announce fresh ones to
reinforce the first, as new material arises
quickly, and the list should be kept vital.
This list is the community theatre's Stock
Company. From it — however large it may
be — the director should choose as many actors
as possible during the year. In the ideal
community theatre, every one would be given
a chance to try everything which he wished
to do : in that striving limited human version
which we are forced to organize, it is possible
to approach the ideal from afar. A girl who
has nothing to recommend her to the audience
except a desire to play Ophelia cannot, ob-
viously, be put into such a part. But she can
be studied and slipped into a tiny place some-
where : she can be given the satisfaction of
feeling that she has played one part : with
proper training she may even come to larger
ones. There is a story, nmch-repeated, that
one of the most famous of our musicians was
urged, as a girl, to stop singing because she
had no voice.

The sketch permitted by this brief space

154 THE COMIVIUNITY THEATRE

can do little but outline possible courses of
action. Every facet of the theatrical gem may
have unlimited attention. The Music Com-
mittee advises and provides music : the artists
are gathered into a studio group : workshop
opportunities are endless. A large theatre
may have a library ; even the smallest will
find a bookshop useful in which to offer for
sale plays old and new during the performances.
The acting may be regulated by a Trials Com-
mittee: when the first agony of showing what
they can and what they cannot do is over,
let such a committee seize the aspiring actors
and give them direction in diction, lessons in
dancing, or courses in pantomime and inter-
pretation. It is possible to elaborate the
edifice endlessly.

The progress of a play through the channels
of this complicated machinery would happen
somewhat after this fashion. At the com-
mencement of the season, the president would
notify some prominent person that he was
to have charge of the fifth production. The
date of his production assigned, he would be
asked to consider and to submit plays. Mean-

SUGGESTIONS 155

time, the director with his committee and the
Play Committee would also be reading.

A week before the time for rehearsals to
begin, the manager would be invited to meet the
Director's Committee. In this meeting as much
consideration as seemed compatible with the
general policy of the year would be shown his
desires ; he would be consulted in matters of
the play, the cast, and the selection of artistic
advisers. But in the final instance, questions
must be decided by the director.

Rehearsal of the play would be put into the
hands of the director's assistant, a member of
the committee to whom the production came
in rotation. He will assume responsibility :
he will discuss the play with the director : he
will be allowed great freedom in his control,
and will be led rather than directed.

The cast will be selected from the acting
list. It may be that one part or another can-
not be decided : trials for that part will be
privately provided to decide it. The cast
will assemble, and the play will be read to them.
Certain large lines of its form will be suggested.
Then they will be expected to study, and at

156 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

first the director's assistant will allow them
great liberty in working out their own ideas,
cutting out only those conceptions which
make a blatant disharmony with the whole.

The rehearsing of the play may be done in
several ways. Every director has his own
methods. But two things are important : the
director-in-chief should be the court of last
resort, and the director's assistant in charge
should be given great freedom. It is unwise
to allow promiscuous suggestion from whoso-
ever happens to be present at a rehearsal.
All directions should come through the person
in command.

As the play progresses, the manager and his
committee consult the branches of greenroom
direction. Costumes, scenery, and lighting
must be thoroughly discussed : experiments
must be made. If the closets do not contain
the proper material to twist into use, the studio
department will be called into play. So it
goes. On the day of dress rehearsal, all the
departments will be assembled with pencil
and with pads, to jot down suggestions for the
director.

SUGGESTIONS 157

And when the premiere, the first night, the
production actually arrives, the signal which
darkens the auditorium and sets the curtain
in slow motion is like a lever which releases a
steady, efficient machine. Everywhere each
tiny part slips into action. There are mem-
bers who sit in quiet corners, waiting for a
chance to do some inconspicuous service with
the same eager keenness that shines on the
heroine's delicately rouged face. And across
the wholly eradicated line of the footlights,
there comes a whisper of sweetness, which is
the fragrance of fellowship.

CHAPTER XII

The Theatrical Renaissance

The enthusiast and the sluggard are equally
susceptible to the human failing of impatience :
the seer of visions, beholding his dream afar
off, chafes at the stretch between himself and
his accomplishment : the disbeliever cannot
look beyond present imperfection.

( The community theatre will suffer both from
those who believe in it too much and from those
who have too little faith in its power. ) As an
ideal it will satisfy : it offers to the community
the common interest which is lacking, and to the
arts of the theatre it offers a permanent home^
The community will have an interest wide
enough to include all its members and yet deep
enough to hold them all. The theatre arts will
find a place to expand and to grow.

But the practical application of the ideals of
democracy to the theatre as an institution
158

THE THEATRICAL RENAISSANCE 159

means very distinct limitations. ^ The ideal is
not that of a connoisseur : it is the joyous ideal
of a creator. The art which will be produced
by a theatre so governed and so manned with
artists will be the tiny acorn of art from which
the oak tree will not come except by a process
of slow growth.

The working of the community theatre must
be attended with faith and with no discourage-
ment. Friction is bcund to arise, friction which
seems about to prevent the accomplishment
even of the most minor ends. But with faith
and courage, such friction can be turned into
power and made to propel the machine.

It would be madness to expect that because
a theatre is established in a community, it
would instantly begin to produce art which
would rival in beauty and in technique the art
which has acquired its richness through genera-
tions of tradition. The first struggles of the
average community theatre will not compare in
ease of expression with the theatre as we know
it. They will be fantastic and often grotesque
to a trained eye and ear. But if they have a
sincere foundation and if they cling to their

160 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE

naivete, there is no limit to be put upon their
ultimate achievement.

For this reason, the community theatre
carries a promise to the theatre as an art, which
is not equalled, I think, by any other possible
theatrical ideal. The arts in the theatre are
given every opportunity. The new forces of
art which the theatre has so recently been feel-
ing, are given a twofold reinforcement. The
community theatre spreads news of them to
every member of the theatre : it creates an
audience which not only understands art, but
which comes clamoring for the gifts of art;
and it takes away from the theatre the danger
— the stultification and oblivion — which
hangs over it now upon its present commer-
cial and speculative basis.

The renaissance of the theatre in our time
has long since begun to affect us. The stirring
of fresh life is evident in each new theatrical
production upon Broadway : it does not neglect
the smallest stock house in the country. We
are obliged to acknowledge its existence and
its vitality ; we are glad to recognize that the
art is assuming control. And how may we

THE THEATRICAL RENAISSANCE 161

best help that tremendous achievement to its
fullest growth ?

In answer to this question I have submitted
these outlines for the community theatre, a
house of flay in which events offer to every
member of a body politic active participation
in a common interest. It is not to be judged
as the full-blown flower of art : it is not even a
bud about to open. Rather it might be called
the soil — fertile and fragrant — in which the
seed is to be sown. The infant art of the theatre
is to be rocked in this cradle.

And may we not hope that if it has the in-
terest of the community, the growing taste and
curiosity of its audience, combined with a
group of artists whose lives have been freed
from the canker of distrust and the fester of
the desire for gain, may we not hope that the
theatre of the community will, as it develops
new strength, bring new art forms and new
vigor into the art of the theatre? This gift
would be the final achievement towards which
we must labor in the Theatre of Democracy.

APPENDIX^

The list of theatres which follows will indicate in
part the variety and vitality of the new theatrical
enthusiasm. It can do little more. At this moment
when fresh ventures are being made in untried
fields every day, such a list must fall far short of
completeness. In the comment there has been no
attempt at criticism and no effort to classify either
the output or the organization. The notes have
been chiefly compiled from the statement of some
member of each theatre's staff.

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

The Vagabond Players

Organized in 191G by Mrs. Nathan and Mr. Sax
to produce new works by iVmerican authors and
important plays by foreign writers which would not
otherwise be seen in Baltimore. The theatre is a
converted barroom (see photograph) seating sixty-
two people. The organization is supported by sub-

^ List is alpliubelical.
1G3

164 APPENDIX

scriptions and gives pcrforniaiiccs twice a week, pre-
senting three one-act plays a month for five months.
These plays are selected by a committee of five
members and acted by casts chosen by tri^l from all
interested persons, under the direction of Mrs.
Nathan and Mr. Sax. All services are given.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

Greek Theatre

An out-of-door theatre which follows Greek lines
in its design. Is in close association with the Uni-
versity of California. Professional performances
are often given there beside notable productions by
the students of the university.

BETHEL. MAINE

A converted stable which is at the service of all
the community who wish to join in theatrical work.
Seats one hundred fifty people and has a comfortable
stage. Under the direction of Miss Schornle of Cin-
cinnati, and the patronage of Mr. W. J. Upson.

BLL^ HILL, MAINE

A private open-air theatrical stage cut out of the
rock, with the lovely peak of Blue Hill towering
over it.

APPENDIX 165

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Toy Theatre

A group of amateurs who carried on interesting
experiments in production in a tiny theatre made
from a stable. When the subscribers grew numerous,
an attempt was made to build a larger theatre and
move into it, but the theatre is now occupied by a
stock company, and the Toy organization no longer
exists. Founded 1910. Closed 1915.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Community Theatre

Organized in 1917 by Henry B. Stillman, for the
common use, pleasure, and instruction of the com-
munity. A company of professional actors under
an experienced director. Aim is to establish a per-
manent self-supporting repertory company. Sup-
ported partly by subscribers.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

The 47 Workshop

Founded in 1914 by Professor George Pierce Baker
to give a hearing at Harvard University and Radcliffe
College to any one who has something interesting to
offer in the theatrical arts. Plays are chosen by Mr.
Baker with the approval of the Executive Committee,

166 APPENDIX

and cast by them from a company of players who
have been tested in former plays reinforced by less
experienced actors. The audience consists of people
deeply interested in the arts of the theatre, willing
to cooperate with the work, at least financially;
it is limited to four hundred by the lack of accommo-
dation : new members are proposed and seconded
by old ones. The aiidience is required to send in
a written criticism of the performance, from which
the names are removed before submitting them to
the author and workers. This device proves satis-
factory and helpful. The theatre is the inadequate
Idler Theatre of Radcliffe College.

CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CALIFORNIA

Forest Theatre Society

First production in 1910 was due to the efforts of
literary people in Carmel. The theatre is an outdoor
one. The society is supported by its members and
assisted by the business men of the town. Mem-
bership is unlimited : fee one dollar a year. Under
the direction of a council of fifteen members who are
elected annually. This council chooses plays, and the
director is appointed by them. There are standing
committees on Plays, Costumes, Finance, Member-
ship, Programmes, and Publicity. The plays pro-
duced are original — unacted — in so far as is pos-
sible, and often written by local playwrights.

APPENDIX 167

The production of an annual Children's Play is
a feature of the programme.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

The Hull House Players

The dramatic group of the Hull House Settlement,
which came originally, INIiss Addams tells us in her
history of Hull House, from the inspiration of the
Passion Play at Oberammergau. Its audience is
made up of the settlement people and of interested
outsiders ; the company is chiefly of the neighbor-
hood, under the direction of Laura Dainty Pel-
ham. Has produced many interesting sociological
plays.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

The Little Theatre

Founded 1909. Has produced every kind of play
under the direction of Mr. Maurice Browne. Has
lately received an endowment,

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

The Players Workshop

An experimental theatre where ideas may be
worked out in practice. It gives plays by Chicago
writers oiily, and nothing but first productions.

168 APPENDIX

Each programme is played for six nights in one week.
The settings and costumes are designed and made in
the studio of the organization.

CINCINNATI. OHIO

Little Playhouse Company

Founded by Mrs. Helen Schuster-Martin. Pro-
duces unusual plays. Seeks to become a community
venture. Company is part professional, on nominal
salaries.

CONTOOCOOK, NEW HAMPSHIRE

The Putney Hill Improvement Society, organized
for the betterment of rural conditions, has a theatri-
cal department. The theatre is a converted disused
schoolhouse which holds one hundred twenty-five
people. A committee is chosen to manage each pro-
duction.

DETROIT, MICHIGAN

Arts and Crafts Theatre

Has just finished its first season — an artistic
achievement of note, imder the direction of Mr.
Sam Hume. Subscribers, who are represented in
the management by an advisory committee, support
it. Its purpose is defined as "entertainment and
art" but it seeks to express the spirit of the locality
by producing plays written there.

APPENDIX 169

FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA

Little Country Theatre

An organization of amateurs under the leadership
of Mr. Alfred Arvold and connected closely with the
extension work of the Agricultural College. It gives,
among other plays, those of pioneer life which are
most suited to the country audiences for which it is
organized. The company shifts from one commu-
nity to another. A department of dramatic literature
is also part of the work, and there is a valuable loan
dramatic library. The theatre is a remodelled
chapel. The effects have spread to South Dakota,
Montana and Iowa.

GALESBURG. ILLINOIS

Little Prairie Playhouse

During the past season has produced monthly
programmes of long and short plays of a serious
nature, among them an original play by the
director, Mr. J. A. Crafton.

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

Little Theatre Society of Indiana

Organized in February, 1015, at the suggestion of
Professor William Jenkins. Affiliated with the local
Drama Ix^ague. Has no theatre. Work of an ex-

170 APPENDIX

perimental nature, not always under a professional
director. Objects are "the experimental and reper-
tory presentation of both approved and untried
dramatic works, and the development of the re-
sources of the community in the creation and in-
terpretation of vital and artistic plays." Member-
ship of three classes by which association is chiefly
financed. But performances are open to the public,
and the players need not be members of the society.
(The coming season may see a limitation of this
policy.)

LAKE FOREST. ILLINOIS

Lake Forest Players

Organized by Mrs. Arthur Aldis for the pleasure
of the players and their friends, as an experiment
and an adventure. The theatre is a converted
wooden house. In its seventh season, which
covers the summer months.

LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA

Little Theatre

Control was assumed in 1916 by Miss Aline
Barnsdall and the Players Producing Company.
Mr. Richard Ordynski made several productions
during the season 191C-1917. The theatre will
reopen in 1917-1918 under the Player Producing
Company.

APPENDIX 171

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN ;

The Little Theatre of Milwaukee

Founded in 1912 to provide good dramatic fare
for Milwaukee, and in its present policy aims to
follow the New Free Folk Stage in Berlin. Theatre
seats one hundred fifty. Membership unlimited ;
dues three dollars a year. Conducts an open-air
theatre in summer, and opens its doors to all Chil-
dren's Players beside giving plays for children.
The director-producer is assisted by an advisory
board of prominent persons. Plays are acted by
amateurs : services are all given. Under the direc-
tion of Mrs. Edith Adams Stewart.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

The Wisconsin Players

Organized as the Wisconsin Dramatic Society and
Players with a purpose akin to that of the Abbey
Theatre in Dublin. Two years ago it abandoned
its branch in Madison, which had formed an "ex-
change company" up to that time. Has a theatre,
conducts a workshop to encourage experiment in
the arts of the theatre. Membership open to all who
are interested. Dues include all the activities of the
society. Non-members admitted to plays. Origi-
nally under the direction of Mr. Thomas Dickinson,
now directed by Mrs. Laura Sherry.

172 APPENDIX

MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY

MoNTCLAiB Platers

Open to the entire community. Dues fifty cents
a year : tickets for individual performances sell at
twenty-five cents. Players chosen from the com-
munity by competition. Direction and production
by members. Executive Committee select plays.
High School used as theatre. First season has
roused great enthusiasm.

MOUNT TAMALPAIS, CALIFORNIA

The Mountain Plat

Founded in 1913, since which time there have been
annual productions. The original owner, Mr. Wil-
liam Kent, deeded the amphitheatre to the trustees
to be held forever for The Mountain Play. Visitors
are urged to spend the day upon the Mountain, and
thousands take advantage of the invitation every
year. The earliest play was acted by students from
the University of California.

NEW YORK CITY

Bramhall Platers

A professional company under the direction of
Mr. Butler Davenport, who is the author of some
of their plays as well. Opened in 1916.

APPENDIX 173

NEW YORK CITY

Community Chorus

Organized by Harry Barnhart, Director, January
6, 1916. Has sung every week since its organization
and has invited everybody freely to sing with it.
Holds "Sings" in Central Park every Sunday after-
noon with from five to ten thousand persons present,
besides producing such choruses as Handel's Messiah
and Haydn's Creation with from one to two thousand
voices.

(Not a Theatre, yet important to the Theatre.)

NEW YORK CITY

The GiiAMMERCY Players

An organization announced to open in 1917-1918,
under the direction of Mr. Edwin Hopkins.

NEW YORK CITY

Greenwich Village Theatre

Announced.

"No set policy will be adhered to regarding the
length of plays presented . . . plays by the more
important European dramatists . . . particular at-
tention to the younger American playwrights . . .
an occasional classical play revived. A company of
professionals who are amateurs in the sense that

174 APPENDIX

they love acting as an art and are willing to forsake
the commercial theatre with its long runs and set
methods in order to do good work."

(From the Advance Announcement)

Is to include also Sunday evening concerts and will
present to the public unusual artists — musicians
and dancers — some of a type whose art would be
lost in a large concert hall.

Another activity is to be "conferences" — not
stereotyped lectures, but talks in which the audience
takes part. Besides, it plans to hold art exhibitions
so that younger men may be given a chance to
exhibit.

' NEW YORK CITY

The Marionette Theatre

A fairy tale theatre for children which has its head-
quarters at Richmond Hill House, 28 Macdougal
Street, under the direction of Remo Bufano.

NEW YORK CITY

MORNINGSIDE PlAYERS

Organized in the season 1916-1917 by Mr, Hatcher
Hughes of Columbia University together with several
of his pupils. Includes Mr, Clayton Hamilton and
Mr, Barrett Clark on its executive force. The
membership is not limited to those interested people
who are actually connected with the University . . .

APPENDIX 175

any one offering his services as actor, manager,
playwright, or producer is ehgible. The two pro-
ductions last season were made in the Comedy
Theatre : the organization has no home and no spe-
cific audience.

NEW YORK CITY

Neighborhood Playhouse

The developed dramatic classes of the Henry
Street Settlement beautifully housed in the theatre
which was the gift of the Misses Lewisohn. Pro-
duces Jewish Festival Flays, short and long plays of
every description, and is constantly responsible for
the introduction of good professional companies to
Grand Street. The artistic staff is an excellent one
and the resident actors skilled amateurs. Its work
is constantly varied and interesting. The manage-
ment of the theatre is in the hands of a board of
management : the audience is primarily drawn from
the neighborliood of the Lower East Side; but all
New York wanders in from time to time.

The theatre was built in 1914 : before that time
productions had been made in a near-by hall.

NEW YORK CITY

The Playhouse

In 1915-1916 Miss Grace George established a
repertory company in The Playhouse, producing a

176 APPENDIX

new play every month in the face of the continued
success of each new 'production, which would have
enabled a lazy manager to fall into the " long run "
habit. The announcement has just been made
that the theatre is to be reopened for the season
1917-1918.

NEW YORK CITY

Portmanteau Theatre

(Not in the strict sense a social theatre, since it
does not limit itself in any way by direct connection
with any audience; it is, however, of vital importance
because its ingenuity and its simplicity may lead to
the accomplishment of almost any ends.)

Mr. Stuart Walker's complete theatrical stage,
which can go to the ends of the earth at a moment's
notice. It requires a room sixteen and one half
feet high, twenty feet long, and forty feet wide.
The company is a repertory company made up of
talented young professional actors who regard
acting as an art. The artistic staff is unusually
gifted and efficient.

NEW YORK CITY

Pbovincetown Flayers

Called "The Playwrights' Theatre." An experi-
mental theatre which began at Provincetown, Mass-
achusetts, when a group of authors interested in

APPENDIX 177

dramatic writing gathered there for two consecutive
summers. In the summer of 1915 this group made
their first productions. In 1916 they moved into the
Wharf Theatre. In the winter of 1916 the first New
York productions were undertaken. Tickets are
sold only to subscribers, and the membership is so
much in demand that many season-subscribers were
refused last year. Plays are written and produced
by the active members : services are free with the ex-
ception of two oflBcers who give all their time to the
management.

NEW YORK CITY

Washington Square Players

Originally a group of interested non-professional
people who began acting for their own amusement
and have progressed to the Bandbox Theatre for a
much talked-of season (1915-1916) and have followed
it by meeting Broadway upon its own ground in the
Comedy Theatre (1916-1917). They have done
many interesting and some startling plays.

NEW YORK CITY

The Theatre Workshop

Organized in November, 1916, for the purpose of
centralizing the various creative interests of the
theatre for their mutual inspiration and for the
non-commercial enlargement of their opportunities.

178 APPENDIX

Has among its departments, Playfinding Committee,
Associate Players, Production Department, Stars
and Directors, and an Extension by which plays
may be sent with good casts to schools or towns
desiring them. Depends upon subscription for
support.

NORTHAMPTON. MASSACHUSETTS

Northampton Piatbbs

A professional company which is somewhat re-
sponsible to the town for the success or failure of its
productions. Organized in 1910. Under the direc-
tion of Mr. Bertram Harrison.

ORANGE, NEW JERSEY

Blythelea Flayers

An amateur organization following the lines of a
club, which has a theatre in Llewellyn Park on the
estate of Mrs. C. C. Goodrich. The theatre is
remodelled from a stable and carriage house, and is
furnished with many conveniences such as a dome
for lighting and an otherwise adequately equipped
stage. Plays are produced for members and their
guests, and then are repeated for some charity.
The work is all voluntary and is under the di-
rection of Mr. Howard Greenley, the architect of
the theatre.

APPENDIX 179

PETERBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE

The Edward MacDowell Memorial Society has
made a habit, since the year 1911, of producing a
Festival upon a beautiful outdoor stage on the
MacDowell estate. The colony of artists which
assembles there for the summer has given its services,
and the village has an excellent choral organization.
Mrs. Edward MacDowell is the moving spirit of the
group.

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

Pittsburgh Theatre Association

In its first season. Hopes to develop into a per-
manent art theatre. Under the direction of Mr.
Thomas H. Dickinson.

PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS

Pittsfield Theatre

A stock company which is supported by interested
townspeople who own stock and control the policy
to this extent.

PLAINFIELD, VERMONT

Village Theatre

The stage of the Town Hall, reconstructed by the
cooperative effort of the selectmen and Mr. Howard

180 APPENDIX

Hart, is used for frequent village entertainments
and for productions by the summer visitors as well.
Has a curtain painted by Mr. Maxfield Parrish.

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK

The Little Theatre

Founded under the auspices of the Drama League.
Audience unlimited by membership. Produces one-
act plays of every variety with amateur casts drawn
from a group of about one hundred members whose
services are given. Play-reading committee of three
chooses plays. First season.

SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI

Little Playhouse Company

Productions limited by the stage of the Artist's
Guild Theatre. Audience limited to members of
society. Has subscription list so large that actors
and stage hands have been paid from the first.
Policy for next season undetermined, as it is changing
directors. Has been under the direction of Doctor
Masseck.

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA

The Little Theatre

Incorporated in February, 1917. Composed of
one hundred active and forty associate members.

APPENDIX 181

Under the direction of eleven corporate directors.
Is the outcome of the production of two plays, and
expects during the next season to produce one
programme a month, under the direction of a pro-
fessional coach. Casts are composed of amateurs.
There is no theatre as yet, but negotiations have
been made to remodel an abandoned church de-
signed by Cass Gilbert.

UNIVERSITY, NORTH DAKOTA

Sock and Buskin Society

"Little Playhouse"

"Bankside"

A dramatic laboratory under Mr. Frederick
H. Koch of the Department of English. Member-
ship limited to forty and based upon competi-
tive trials. Programmes carefully planned in co-
operation with the Department of English. Has
two theatres — The Little Playhouse and The
Bankside, an outdoor theatre with a stream flow-
ing between stage and audience. Has been doing
constructive work for twelve years. Under Mr.
Koch's direction has produced two pageants {Pag-
eants of the Northvesf, 1912, and Shakespeare the
Playmaker, 1016) which are unique in that they
were written l)y a class of twenty students in col-
laboration.

182 APPENDIX

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Drama League Players

Organized 1916-1917. Supported by subscrip-
tion, but audience not limited to subscribers. Plays
chosen by a committee of the Drama League. Will-
ingness to serve the only qualification for mem-
bership. Services given. Uses a normal school as
a theatre,

WASHINGTON. D.C.

Sylvan Theatre

An out-of-door stage and auditorium (see photo-
graphs) built and to be maintained by the War De-
partment in its administration of the Park system
of the District of Columbia. May be used for any
performance or play which has the approval of the
Office of Public Buildings and Grounds. Plan
contains seats for five thousand but only twenty-
eight hundred were used at the initial performance :
these seats are arranged with no cross aisles, so that
the view is unobstructed. The acoustics are said
to be good. The United States supports the stage,
including such details as lighting, policing, and the
management of tickets. Other expense falls upon
the company giving the production.

APPENDIX 183

NOTES

The author's information in regard to the theatres
in the following cities is limited to hearsay accounts
of their existence, as letters directed to their manage-
ments have unfortunately failed to elicit response, —

Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Cleveland, Ohio.

Evanston, Illinois. '

Louisville, Kentucky.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

CALIBAN

Since these chapters went to press there has been
a new production of a remodelled Caliban in the Har-
vard Stadium. Naturally great strides have been
made in the technique of the new art of which Cali-
ban is the exponent. In the perfect circle made by
stage and audience, practically all the text was
heard. The mechanical device was elaborated, a
steam curtain which hid the inner stage added ma-
terially to the sense of illusion, and such old theatri-
cal tricks as the trapdoor were employed with the
most telling results. But the community spirit was
once more of most importance. Behind the scenes
it was vividly alive, just as it had been in New York
a year ago: "out front" it seemed more vital. It
may be that the recent declaration of war, and the

184 APPENDIX

fresh passages in the play which seemed to touch
that declaration, had put the spectators in a receptive
mood. At any rate, the Community Drama (for Mr.
MacKaye has avoided the critics by changing the
name of his erstwhile masque) rolled up fresh enthu-
siasm with each passing day until performances long
exceeded the advertized number. If some force in
the community had been at work for months before
the rehearsals organizing and advancing this very
enthusiasm, the giant task to which Miss MacKaye,
Mr. MacKaye, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Brown bent them-
selves (with the help of thousands) would have been
much simpler. As it is, Caliban was so filled with
beauty and the promise of beauty that we may well
say, with the pale-faced shopgirl who followed me
down the Stadium steps, in the face of war and in the
face of sacrifice, "Ain't it wonderful to be livin'
now?"

OBERAMMERGAU

The war has swept through Oberammergau. Miss
Madeline Doty tells in an article in a recent Atlantic
of how she found privation and unhappiness in the
village when she visited it some months ago. And
now Anton Lang, the Christus loved of thousands, of
the delicate body and spiritual face, must experience
the reality of Golgotha : the drink of vinegar and
gall is set to his lips : he is to descend into actual
service in the German army. How many times, I

APPENDIX 185

wonder, has he prayed before the altar in the moun-
tain Church, murmuring in words famiUar the peti-
tion that the cup might pass from him ? The cruci-
fixion which he has suffered in spirit has come to
him, and with him, to all his neighbors. We cannot
be amazed that the Oberammergauers are broken-
hearted and that in their discouragement they despair
of mending their exquisite fabric. But whatever
ancient traditions of beauty may be snapped by the
war, surely, when it is over, Oberammergau will re-
turn to its greatest joy. And because the spirit of
the Passion Play has spread across the sea to us,
because we are beginning to realize the strength of
Community Drama, it may fall to us as a duty to
help restore the actuality to that little village.

REFERENCES
Playgrounds.

Chubb, Percival, & Associates: "Festivals and Plays

in Schools and Elsewhere." Harper, 1912.

An illuminating book, filled with suggestions for the

celebration of special occasions.
Curtis, Henry S. : "Education through Play." Mac-

millan, 1914.

Addressed to those who are interested in play as an

educational factor.

"The Practical Conduct of Play." Macmillan,

1915.

An excellent text-book : gives aims and spirit as

well as methods.

186 APPENDIX

Froebel, F. W. A. : " Menschenerziehung." 1826.

A discussion of the child, largely before seven

years.
Lee, Joseph: "Constructive and Preventive Philos-
ophy." New York, 1902.

"Play and Playgrounds." Boston, 1906. Pam-

plilet for practical uses.
Leland, x\rthur, and Leland, Lorna. "Playground

Tecluiique and Playcraft." Basette, 1909.

Contains an excellent short sketch of the philosophy

of play.

Pageants

Beegle, Mary Porter, and Crawford, J.: "Community

Drama and Pageantry." Yale University Press,

1916.

Has a bibliography of pageantry which will prove

valuable to the organizers of pageants. Also directs

the pageant from its beginning.
Davol, R. : "Handbook of American Pageantry."

Taunton.

A review of the new pageantry in America.
Bulletins of the American Pageant Association.

Give lists of pageants as they are produced from

time to time, and discuss questions of interest to the

producers of pageants.

Oberammergau, the Passion Play
Burton, Lady Isabel.

An emotional account by an ardent Roman Catholic.
Blondel, Georges : "Le Drame De La Passion." Paris,

1900.

APPENDIX 187

Jackson, John P. : "'The Oberammergau Passion Play."

London, 1880.

Account of stage, setting, and procedure.
Mallorj-, Gerald: "The Passion Play at Oberam-

mergau." Boston, 1872.
Moses, Montrose J. : "The Passion Play of Oberam-

mergau." Duffield, 1909.

A translation of the text as well as an historical

resume and short critical discussion of the origin of

the play's form.
Stead, ^Yilliam : "The Passion Play at Oberammergau."

Stead, London, 1910.

A careful account written in Oberammergau.

Contains emotional reaction as well as good pic-
tures.

State Establishment of Theatres

Archer, William, and Barker, Granville: "Schemes
and Estimates for a National Theatre." Duffield.
A treatment of the National Theatre from an
English point of view, which contains practical
discussions of value to the organizer. The duties
of various staff members are treated at length and
lists of plays are suggested for the Stock or Reper-
tory Company.

MacKaye, Percy: "Caliban by the Yellow Sands."
Doubleday, Page, 1916.

The text of tlie Sliakespeare Tercentenary Masque,
witli an account of tlie methods employed in its
production.

"The Civic Theatre." Kennerley, 1912.
A collection of valuable and inspiring sketches.

188 APPENDIX

"The Masque of Saint Louis."

Text of the masque produced in Saint Louis as a

civic venture.

"Substitute for War." Macmillan, 1915.

A cry for beauty in service.

"Report of Committees of the Saint Louis

Masque."

An illuminating account of a city working together

for civic betterment and enjoyment.

The New Theatre

Craig, Edward Gordon: "On the Art of the Theatre."
Chicago, 1912.

Filled with the voice of prophecy : most inspiring
to the artist of the theatre.

Carter, Huntley : "The New Spirit in Drama and Art."
London.

An account of changes in the Continental Theatre
and in England.

Cheney, Sheldon: "The New Movement in the
Theatre." M. Kennerley.
Delightfully clear account of the new art ideals.

Moderwell, H. K. : "The Theatre of To-day." Lane,
1914.

An able summing up of the forces at work in the
new theatre.

Gregory, Lady Augusta: "Our Irish Theatre." Put-
nam.

The aims and methods of the Irish Theatre move-
ment set forth in an interesting and readable fashion.

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below

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